


To All The Griefs I Left Behind

by Pokimoko



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Distorted Reality, F/M, Gen, Halloween Gift Exchange, Hell Trauma, Implied Sexual Content, Lots of talking and lots of handholding, Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV) Needs A Hug, Mystery, Psychological Drama, Psychological Horror, Set Sometime around Season 5A, Surreal, Vague Tags to Avoid Story Spoilers, Witches, phantoms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-07 22:20:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 44,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26945068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pokimoko/pseuds/Pokimoko
Summary: It's been weeks since Lucifer returned from Hell, and Chloe couldn't be happier. They are together and—after so many years of ups and downs—everything is finally perfect.Even if the world seems a bit weirder than usual. Even if the ghosts of Lucifer's past are coming back to haunt him. Even if Chloe feels like she's losing her mind. But it's fine.It's all fine.
Relationships: Azrael & Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV), Background Eve/Mazikeen (Lucifer), Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar, Ella Lopez & Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 33
Kudos: 59
Collections: TDN's Incredible Exchange 2020





	1. All Gooey Eyed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [contumeliouscorvid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/contumeliouscorvid/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello friends and foes! So glad to have you here. I'm just going to start this thing off by saying I have absolutely no idea how I managed to write all of this in just over a month. I have never written something this long in such a short amount of time, nor do I ever think I'll do so again. This here, folks, is a fluke. 
> 
> I've been wanting to write in the Lucifer fandom for years now but my ideas never went beyond "Lucifer has wings, they go flap flap" (ironic, really, given the lack of wings in this fic). But then I finally got an idea that I could work with, having been inspired by a movie that I'll leave unnamed for now so not to unintentionally spoil anything. I left the idea to settle in my mind for a few weeks, hoping to one day write it. Then I saw that this Halloween challenge was happening, so I signed up, knowing from my own experiences that nothing ever really inspires me to do something more than an ever-approaching deadline. And well, I'm pretty sure I proved my own point. 
> 
> My prompts for this here story were:  
> 1\. 'Danse Macabre' by Camille Saint-Saëns  
> 2\. Graveyard, and  
> 3\. United 
> 
> Admittedly, the prompts acted less of an idea prompt and more as elements of the story. While that might be the case, it would be remiss of me not to state that the first prompt definitely impacted the course of the story. The presence of historical characters originally was planned to be less important to the overarching story before I got the prompt for Danse Macabre (though I'm sure the way I incorporated it—and indeed, the story as a whole—is nothing like you expected, contemeliouscorvid). The change that prompt brought about definitely altered the trajectory of the story big time, and it really was an amazing experience watching this story evolve during the writing process. I had a blast writing it, and I hope you enjoy reading it. :)
> 
> (The title for this story is taken from the poem 'Eloisa to Abelard' by Alexander Pope, from which I have also included an excerpt.)
> 
> (Also, one last thing: I made a Spotify playlist for this because I really have no self control. [So here it is.](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2bMNHxPvyaiKY28cy6I5FF?si=PExvkx80QdiCSs5LMJmawQ) )

_When at the close of each sad, sorrowing day,  
_ _Fancy restores what vengeance snatch'd away,  
_ _Then conscience sleeps, and leaving nature free,  
_ _All my loose soul unbounded springs to thee.  
_ _Oh curs'd, dear horrors of all-conscious night!  
_ _How glowing guilt exalts the keen delight!  
_ _Provoking Daemons all restraint remove,  
_ _And stir within me every source of love._  
 _I hear thee, view thee, gaze o'er all thy charms,  
_ _And round thy phantom glue my clasping arms._

**_(from ‘Eloisa to Abelard’ by Alexander Pope)_ **

_***_

Lucifer wouldn’t stop staring at the front door. 

At first, Chloe had thought he was merely staring into space, lost in whatever thoughts he was wont to have, but as she’d settled into watching him cook breakfast, she’d realised his focus was honed to a fine edge, and it was pointed straight at the door.

It’d been edging its way open for quite some time, spilling a thin beam of pale light into the room. But it was the smell that drifted through that Chloe assumed had caught Lucifer’s attention. It was as if someone stood outside Chloe’s apartment door and was chainsmoking far too many cigarettes. Given some of her neighbours' predilections, that probably was exactly the reason. Beyond that, there was nothing of interest to be found within the space of the doorframe, and certainly nothing that could hold Lucifer’s historically limited focus for as long as it had.

Whatever it was, Chloe didn’t particularly care to find out, as she decided there were far more important things to focus on right now than the Devil’s opinion of her door or her neighbours' habits.

Such as the pancake burning in the frying pan.

“Lucifer,” Chloe called.

He hummed non-committedly.

Chloe clicked her fingers. “Lucifer!”

Lucifer blinked, and his gaze finally broke away from the door, but even then, Chloe could tell that his attention hadn’t completely shifted to her. “Yes?”

Chloe pointed across the bench to the pan he was standing beside. The confused frown he sent her way quickly turned to one of irritation.

“Oh, bollocks,” he cursed, pulling the pan off the stove-top. He eyed the crispy rims of the pancake with disapproval. “Well, that certainly won’t do.” He marched it over to the trash bin, and before Chloe could so much as utter a protest, the pancake was unceremoniously shoved off the pan, the splat of batter meeting plastic the only sound it made as it disappeared into the bin.

Chloe huffed and crossed her arms on the benchtop. “I could’ve eaten that, you know.”

“That rubbish? Don’t be preposterous,” Lucifer told her as he poured more batter in the pan. “I’d never foul your taste buds with such mediocre cooking.”

“It’s just breakfast, Lucifer. It doesn’t have to be perfect.”

Her words didn’t have the placating effect she’d intended. Chloe could have done the same damage with a pin, the way Lucifer deflated like a balloon at her words. Lucifer’s throat bobbed as he shifted from foot to foot.

“I know,” he murmured. “But I’d like it to be. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”

Chloe couldn’t find it in herself to argue. It’d taken him so long to feel comfortable enough to include himself in Chloe and Trixie’s lives like this after he'd returned from Hell; she didn’t want to ruin it with a misplaced word. “I...suppose not.”

“Excellent,” Lucifer said, perking up, his sombre mood gone as quickly as it had arrived. “You should call your spawn. Her serving should be finished sho—”

His words were drowned out by the screeching groan of the door as it creaked open even further, loud enough that Chloe found herself startling. She really needed to oil the hinges. Across from her, Lucifer grimaced.

“Excuse me one moment,” he said. He marched over to the door and slammed it shut with what Chloe would expect if a mixologist stirred dramatic flair together with frustration. Much to her own relief, the cigarette stench retreated once the door clicked into place. Lucifer turned back to the room with a smile, and brushed his hands down the lapels of his suit.

“You should keep a closer eye on your security, Detective,” he said as he returned to the kitchen bench. “Anyone could get in.”

Chloe rolled her eyes. “It’s not like closed doors ever stopped you.”

“Yes, but I’m not ‘anyone’ now, am I?” he said, leaning over the bench towards her and bopping his finger on her nose playfully. “I have skills that common criminals can only fantasise about.”

Chloe batted his hand away with a smile, and he relented easily, turning away to the stove-top to flip the pancake. “Considering the amount of break-ins that happen every year, I think they’re doing just fine,” Chloe said.

“Ah, but I doubt they are doing it with any panache.”

“That’s probably because they don’t want to get caught,” Chloe pointed out. She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation, but as if she’d dare let Lucifer go on without adding a dash of rationality to his thoughts.

“Excuses, excuses,” Lucifer tutted. “If you are to commit a crime, you should at least do it in style. Then, if you do get caught, you’ll be the talk of the town. And certainly have a more interesting case for us to solve.”

Chloe shook her head, unable to keep the affection out of the reproving look she sent him. “‘Course you’d say that. Please, for the sake of everyone, don’t go around offering that piece of advice to criminals. I’d rather not have to deal with a string of fashionable and enigmatic murderers because you egged them into spicing it up.”

“Speaking of spicing it up, what would you like on your pancake?” Lucifer eyed the kitchen cupboards with thinly veiled disapproval. “Considering your spartan selection of food goods, we’ll have to keep it simple. How about cardamom? Coconut syrup? No? What about dulce de leche?”

“ _That’s_ simple for you?” Chloe wasn’t even sure she had any of those in her pantry. Ever.

Lucifer stared at her like she was asking him a trick question. “Yes?” he said.

Chloe decided it was best not to disturb Lucifer’s lavish standards of what counted as ‘simple’, and gave the back of his hand a gentle pat. “Maple syrup should be fine, Lucifer. There’s some in the fridge door.”

He spun around with the pan and slid the finished pancake onto her plate, and after returning the pan to the stove top, he quickly retrieved the syrup bottle. Chloe went to take it from his hand, but he lifted it out of her reach.

“Allow me,” he told her. When she gestured for him to go ahead, he hovered the bottle a fair distance above the plate and began to expertly pour the syrup over the pancake in swirling loops. Somehow, he made it look graceful, and with uncanny perception, he stopped at Chloe’s preferred amount. He beamed as he swept his hand over the finished dish. “Viola! Les crêpes au sirop d'érable.”

Chloe chuckled. “Je dois donner au diable son dû: ceux-ci ont l'air délicieux,” she said, before taking a bite into the massive pancake.

Damn, that was good. She made an appreciative sound in her throat as she closed her eyes and savoured the taste. When she went to take another bite, she noticed Lucifer was staring at her, twisting his ring to and fro.

“What?” Chloe said.

“I didn’t think you spoke French, Detective.” Rather than sounding baffled or even impressed, Lucifer sounded agitated. “Certainly not fluently.”

Chloe blinked. That’s...right. She'd barely learnt a word in the language outside of ‘yes’, ‘no’, ‘thank you’ and ‘do you want to sleep with me tonight’ (Lucifer certainly had loved finding out about that one, and had teased her relentlessly for it, despite her protests she only knew it because of a song). But, somehow, despite her complete lack of knowledge, she’d just said a whole sentence with so much as a falter. Yet, now that she thought of it, she couldn’t for the life of her figure out what’d she even said.

That was...weird.

“I must’ve heard it somewhere,” Chloe said uncertainly. Yes, that must be it. Right?

“Yes, of course,” Lucifer said nodding, the tension in his shoulders loosening. “Pardon my confusion.” He cleared his throat, and smiled. “Shall I call your spawn in now? Her pancake is almost done.”

“But you haven’t even...” She trailed off when she spotted the pancake in the pan, crisping lightly at the corners. When had he poured that in? “Er, yeah, sure.”

“Beatrice!” Lucifer called, turning the stovetop off as he did. After he placed Trixie’s pancake on a plate, he set the pan beside the sink to cool.

“You’re not going to have any?” Chloe asked. He hadn't been eating much the last few days, going so far to avoid sitting with them for dinner, and it was really starting to worry her.

Lucifer shook his head, strangely subdued. “No. I...well, I had some food earlier. I’d rather not have any more.” He soaped up his hands and washed them under the tap. The water turned a dusty grey in the basin before it was slurped up by the drain.

“You could have eaten with us, you know,” Chloe said. “If you change your mind, you’re welcome to have some of mine. I don’t mind sharing.”

“I appreciate the sentiment, but I’ll be fine,” he murmured as he dried his hands on the towel that hung beside the sink. “The urchin is coming.”

Sure enough, the moment he said it, Trixie scrambled onto the stool beside Chloe, an excited grin on her face as she took in the giant pancake on her plate. “Yeah!” Trixie whooped. “Pancakes!”

Lucifer gestured to the syrup bottle. “Would you like some maple—oh, you’re going to...oh dear,” he said as his eyes followed with dawning horror as Trixie shoved a huge loading of pancake into her mouth without a whit of dignity or ceremony. 

“Mmmm, th’s is ‘o g’d,” Trixie said through the mouthful of pancake.

Lucifer cringed back from the display, but gave her a smile all the same. “I’m...glad you like it, child.” 

Trixie ate away at the pancake like a ravenous wildfire, and before Chloe had even managed to finish half of her own, Trixie was done. Lucifer blinked, having watched the whole display with something bordering on alarm.

“Has your mother been starving you?” he asked, sending Chloe a suspicious glance.

“Lucifer,” Chloe reprimanded.

Trixie leaned in, and gestured for Lucifer to do the same. He complied, and turned his ear towards her so she could whisper in his ear. She put her hand up to hide her lips from Chloe, but Trixie had never been very good at whispering, and Chloe heard her words quite clearly.

“Mommy said I couldn’t have dessert unless I finished dinner last night. She made me eat broccoli.”

“Detective!” Lucifer gasped, dropping all pretenses of secrecy as he placed a hand on his chest, aghast. “How could you? To your child, no less.”

“It was _roasted_ broccoli,” Chloe protested. “And it’s not that bad. You liked it last time I made it.”

“Yes, but unlike your spawn here, I had to eat infernal cuisine for millennia. Anything is better than that, I assure you.”

That was enough to make Chloe pause. “What kind of food do they even have in Hell? Are there restaurants?”

Lucifer let out a bitter chuckle. “I wish. Think of all the names we could’ve used! 'Hell’s Kitchen'. No, no, that’s too easy. How about 'Frying Pandæmonium'? 'The House of Pies'? 'Poptartarus'? Mm, not sure about that last one. A restaurant that only serves poptarts? Ridiculous.”  
  
He shook his head in amusement, before he sobered and sighed. “Though, I suppose I would’ve been happy to sup there regardless of their miserly table d'hôte. I would’ve preferred it over what I had to eat, that’s for certain. No, I...” He regarded the pancakes with a sad smile. “I had to scavenge for every meal. You see, the only food that exists in Hell are the travesties that exist in the loops, so you take what you get. And even then it tastes like ash. You’re better off starving yourself, for all the good the illusions do.”

Chloe stared at him with wide eyes. “That’s horrible.”

“It is what it is,” he told her. The deep brown of his eyes shimmered with a sadness so deep that Chloe found herself reaching over to take his hand and give it a sympathetic squeeze.

“I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

A brittle breath escaped Lucifer’s mouth, and his mouth flickered into a soft smile. “Not to worry, Detective,” he said, placing his hand on her cheek. He stroked his thumb across her cheekbone, as if swiping away tears that weren’t there. “I had my ways of dealing with it.”

They stared into each other's eyes, their breathing in sync. Lucifer didn’t pull his hand away, for which Chloe was secretly glad. His skin was warm in the same way a blanket is warm in winter: safe and comfortable, something she wanted to cling to with everything she had. Without meaning to, she found herself drifting towards him.

“You’re not going to start kissing, are you?”

Chloe pulled herself out of the depths of Lucifer’s eyes, and did her best to ignore the upset noise Lucifer made when she turned her attention to Trixie. Trixie had obviously spent too much time around Maze, with the way she’d perfected the judgemental raised eyebrow, which she was currently sending the two of them.

“Well, we’re not going to now, are we?” Lucifer lamented. “Don’t you have somewhere you can run off to?”

“Lux?” Trixie suggested. Oh, there was the smug grin: now that was definitely Maze’s influence there.

Lucifer grimaced. “You really must find another dwelling to accost when you wish to escape your mother.”

“Really? ‘Escape’?,” Chloe said. “You make me sound like a jailer.”

“Pardon me. When you want to ‘fly the coop’, child.”

“How is that any better?”

Lucifer quirked his head. “Isn’t a poultry farmer preferable to a jailer?”

Before Chloe could reply, Trixie spoke up. “When you think about it, poultry farmers are just chicken jailers,” she said with a shrug.

Lucifer stared at Trixie, his lips opening and closing as he failed to respond, uncharacteristically lost for words. Chloe didn’t blame him. Trixie sometimes came out with those weird things that only children really could come out with. And Lucifer, she supposed. He had said some real doozies in the time since she met him, and even after discovering the truth about him, there were still times she struggled to deal with all the crazy things he’d bring up. 

Eventually, Lucifer recovered from his fleeting speechlessness and frowned. “Considering the farmers kill the chickens for other humans to consume, I’d rather not entertain any further similarities between the two occupations, thank you very much.”

“You forgot about egg farmers,” Trixie pointed out. “They don’t kill the chickens. They just take the eggs to sell.”

Lucifer hummed thoughtfully. “Yes, well, that’s one similarity I can’t deny, child. The exploitation of your country’s prisoners is hardly a secret. And here I thought Hell was bad. You humans; your greed and depravity really knows no bounds.”

“Could we maybe not discuss the problems with the prison system at”—Chloe checked the clock on the wall— “7:14 in the morning?”

Lucifer glanced at the clock as well and made an ‘o’ shape with his lips. “Of course. My apologies, Detective. We’ll discuss this later, spawn, without the chickens,” he added in sotto voce to Trixie.

Chloe rolled her eyes, but didn’t reprobate him. She finished off the last of her pancake as Trixie and Lucifer turned their conversation towards far more idle things, spanning everything from what Mars was like (according to Lucifer, its atmosphere was good for gliding but not so much flapping, and Chloe wasn’t sure if that was based on first-hand experience or he’d merely done some study into the planet for Trixie’s sake) to dinosaurs ("those subpar imitations in Jurassic Park," Lucifer told Trixie, "look nothing like the real thing, let me assure you") and finally to what was the best thing about Halloween, which was only a few days away. Both Lucifer and Trixie agreed it was the sweets. This in turn led to an argument regarding the semantics of ‘sweets’ and ‘candy’ when Trixie dared to correct him on his English.

Lucifer, strangely enough, appeared to be enjoying himself as he spoke to Trixie, despite his notorious aversion to children. He still leaned back whenever Trixie so much as gestured in his direction, but it was progress. Chloe watched the two of them quietly as she munched on her pancake, not wanting to interrupt their peculiar but impossibly adorable conversation.

Once she had finished her meal, she picked up her and Trixie’s plates to wash up, but Lucifer took them from her hands and took up the task himself. Chloe wasn’t sure if he was being his usual neat freak self, or if he was just being especially kind, but she found herself smiling in appreciation nonetheless.

He really could be quite the angel sometimes, in more ways than one.

Trixie giggled beside her. “Mommy, I think you had too much maple syrup. You’re all gooey eyed.”

Chloe scrunched up her nose. “You little rascal.” She wriggled her fingers in warning before she struck. Trixie’s laughter turned high-pitched as she squirmed under the tickle assault. She tried to bat Chloe’s hands away but it was no use. “I’ll give you gooey,” Chloe told her, before planting kisses all over Trixie’s face, each coupled with their own exaggerated ‘mwah’ sound.

“Stop, stop, Mommy, I surrender,” Trixie said breathlessly.

Chloe laughed, and mercifully stopped her affectionate onslaught. Trixie wiped at her face with theatrical distaste and then rubbed her hands all over Chloe’s shirt in a small act of vengeance.  
  
It was the kind of interaction that was the stuff of Lucifer’s nightmares, and in curiosity, Chloe glanced his way to get a look at whatever horrified expression he would be wearing.

The wistful smile on his face certainly was a surprise. When he realised Chloe was watching him, he snapped back to the sink and finished rinsing up the frying pan.

“Trixie babe, why don’t you go get ready for school?” Chloe said.

“Okay!”

Trixie rushed away to her bedroom, with an early-morning energy that Chloe envied. The door slid to a close, and Chloe and Lucifer were alone once more.

Chloe rounded the bench and sidled up behind Lucifer, wrapping her arms to rest against his stomach. He didn’t stop what he was doing, but he did slow his movement, his breathing coming out just a bit deeper than before. Chloe peppered kisses across the back of his suit jacket before nuzzling into the nook of his neck. He leaned his head to rest against hers, and let out a contented sigh.

“This is nice,” he said. “I wish I had...” He shook his head minutely. “No, nevermind.”

“What?”

Lucifer pushed her hands off his stomach and turned to face her. He leaned down and pressed his forehead against hers. “It’s nothing, darling,” he assured. “Just a stray thought about something long gone.”

“Alright,” Chloe said softly. “But you know you can tell me anything, right. I’ll listen.”

“I know.”

He propped his chin atop her head and pulled her into a warm and loving hug. She settled into the comfort of the embrace, breathing in his smell of burnt wood and pomegranate-scented fabric softener.

The trill of her ringtone pulled them apart.

“There really is no escape from the blasted thing, is there,” Lucifer said, somewhat amused. 

Chloe gave him a look of commiseration, knowing all too well the truth behind that statement, and pulled it out of her pocket to check the caller ID. It was the precinct.

“I have to take this,” she told Lucifer, and he waved his hand in a show of acquiescence.

She pressed the phone to her ear. “Decker,” she answered. The caller updated her on a new case. “Yeah? What’s the address?”

The call was short and to the point, and only a few minutes had passed when she hung up. Lucifer raised an eyebrow.

“Is there a case?”

“Sure is.” Chloe grinned wickedly. “You ready to go to church?”


	2. A Hypothetical, If You Will

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter in which I make it obvious how much of a philosophy nerd I am. Apologies in advance.

Lucifer, to Chloe’s surprise, forgoed taking his Corvette to meet her at the scene, and instead joined her and Trixie on the school drop-off.

What was not so surprising was his grumbling throughout. It was mostly about inane things, like the 'torturous and beastly' music that was playing on the radio before he reached forward and switched it off in a huff. He only let up once Trixie was out of the car.  
  
“Finally, just the two of us,” Lucifer said, sitting himself in the front seat.  
  
Chloe gave one last wave to Trixie, who returned one of her own before she disappeared into the school. Chloe started the car and turned back onto the road.  
  
“You’re just bitter she had you sit in the back.”  
  
Lucifer huffed. “I don’t see how her screaming ‘shotgun’ gives her the right to sit in the passenger seat. I’m billions of years older than her; surely that nullifies any claims she can make.”  
  
“If it bothered you so much, you could have just asked her to sit in the back. She wouldn’t have cared.”  
  
Lucifer’s annoyed façade faltered briefly, and he shifted in his seat. “Yes, well...she wanted it,” he said by way of explanation. He didn’t elaborate, instead turning to stare out the window.  
  
Not that there was much to look at. The buildings and distant mountain range lay hidden in a swath of fog, and the sky above was concocting one hell of a storm. Chloe regarded the sight with a frown. For Los Angeles, the weather was rather gloomy.  
  
But that wasn’t the most unusual thing. She was going the speed limit on the Santa Monica Freeway.  
  
During rush hour.  
  
The scenery was practically soaring by them, something she wasn’t used to except at the earliest hours of the morning, when the sleepless city was as quiet as it could possibly be. If not for the pale light of day coming through the clouds, she honestly would've thought it was early in the morning, the highway was _that_ empty. There was only a smattering of cars ahead of her, and even fewer passing by on the other side of the road.  
  
“Is everyone staying at home today or something? The highway is practically deserted,” Chloe said, mostly to herself.  
  
“It was like this yesterday too,” Lucifer said, his gaze still fixed on the passing scenery. “You didn’t notice?”  
  
Chloe frowned. “No. I guess I mustn’t have been paying attention.”  
  
Lucifer glanced at her for a moment before he darted his eyes away. “It’s not something you should worry yourself too much about.”  
  
“Yeah, but I’m a detective. Noticing stuff is essentially my career.”  
  
“All the time, though? Surely that would be tiring.”  
  
Chloe chuckled. “You’re not wrong. I have been feeling pretty tired lately. Though I think that might be more because I haven’t been sleeping much the last few nights,” she said, and as if to prove her point, a yawn escaped her mouth.  
  
“How come?” Lucifer asked.  
  
“Well, I’ve been falling asleep just fine. It’s my mind that’s been restless.  
  
“Well, as much as I enjoy staying the night in Maze’s old room, I’d happily join you in bed, if it’d help you sleep better.”  
  
Chloe eyed him with a hint of scepticism. “Just to sleep?”  
  
“Yes,” Lucifer confirmed resolutely, “just to sleep. Nothing more. Believe me, Detective, if that time does come, it’ll be special.”  
  
“If?” Chloe said, bemused. “You don’t think we’ll ever reach that point in our relationship?”  
  
“...Nothing’s for certain,” Lucifer said. He sent her an unreadable look that lingered only for a moment, then brushed the fabric of his slacks and straightened, his face brightening with a smile. “So, why were you restless?”  
  
Chloe blinked, startled by the abrupt mood change, but let it slide, not sure she wanted to know why Lucifer seemed so uncertain about their future. “I keep having weird dreams.”  
  
“Oooh, ‘weird’? Those are my favourite kind!” Lucifer smiled suggestively. “Pray tell, what concupiscent dreams have you been having?”  
  
Chloe rolled her eyes. She didn’t even know what ‘concupiscent’ meant, but considering it was Lucifer, she was sure she got the gist. “Not that kind of weird.”  
  
Lucifer deflated a bit, though she could tell it was mostly for show. “A shame. Well, I’d like to hear it regardless, if you’re willing, even if there aren’t any salacious details to speak of.”  
  
“Well, it’s the same dream each time,” she began. She turned off the freeway and exited onto La Cienega Boulevard. It was the route she usually took to head to Lucifer’s from her house, so it was almost an instinct by now. As she drove along, she couldn’t help but note that much like the freeway, the boulevard was basically empty, not just of cars but pedestrians as well. Instead of commenting on it, she continued telling Lucifer about her dream.  
  
“I’m at the Penthouse, but it’s different. All of it—the bar, the piano,the couch, everything—is silver. You’re nowhere to be seen, but my mom and dad are there for some reason, and they’re arguing. Really bad too. They keep yelling about me, about something I did. I don’t know what it even is that they think that I did, but I can’t stop crying.  
  
“Eventually their arguing gets so bad the room starts cracking and falling apart. That’s about the time I rush in to break them apart. I keep trying to calm them down, but it’s like they can’t hear me. I beg and beg them to stop, for so long that my voice gives out. Only then do they acknowledge me. Mom doesn’t say anything but Dad...he says he isn’t proud of me. He’ll never be proud of me.” Chloe let out a shaky breath. “I can’t even speak.  
  
“Then someone grabs me from behind and drags me away, and no matter how much I struggle, I can’t get free. They take me to the balcony and hold me over the edge. And that’s when I see that the person who dragged me away...is you. You look so happy too. Like you’re glad to finally be rid of me. You loosen your fingers...”  
  
“And then?” Lucifer said, warily.  
  
“I fall.”  
  
And fall and fall, Chloe didn’t say. It took so long for it to wake her up each time. She couldn’t believe no one had shaken her awake since the dreams had started, with all the screaming she did, drowning in a fear that didn’t feel like her own.  
  
Beside her, Lucifer looked absolutely horrified, his eyelids fluttering as he pressed himself against the car door. His pupils darted everywhere but where she was, as if she was the sun and he didn’t want to blind himself. Chloe went to put her hand on his, hoping to calm him down, but he gave a tiny shake of his head as he pulled his arm out of her reach. Beyond him, the fog seemed to deepen.  
  
“Lucifer?” she said. “Are you alright? I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just a dream.”  
  
“It’s not.”  
  
Chloe furrowed her brow. “What?”  
  
“It’s not _just_ a dream,” he murmured. “Dreams are lovely, fantastical things. That...,” he paused, seemingly unsure on what to say. Eventually, he settled on, “that sounds rather like a nightmare to me.”  
  
Chloe let out a breath she didn’t realise she was holding. “It’s okay, Lucifer. I can deal with it.”  
  
“You shouldn’t have to. You don’t deserve those kind of nightmares.”  
  
“Right,” Chloe said flatly. “And I suppose I deserve nightmares about sending you to Hell, then.”  
  
Lucifer finally looked at her, his eyes wide. “No, that’s not what I meant. You don’t deserve _any_ nightmares.”  
  
Chloe scoffed. Gosh, he could be unworldly sometimes. “Most people don’t, Lucifer, but that doesn’t stop them from having them,” she told him. “Misery doesn’t just pick and choose who to hurt based on what the person deserves. Even the best of people suffer. The world’s cruel like that.”  
  
“It was supposed to be perfect,” Lucifer mumbled.  
  
“The world? Like it was in Eden? That kind of perfection?” Chloe shrugged. “I think I might be a bit biased, but ignorance and enclosure isn’t perfection. If you lived like that, you would only think it is perfect because you wouldn't know any better.” She paused when a thought drifted into her head. “I suppose it’s kind of like Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. You know it?”  
  
At Lucifer’s nod, she continued. “Eden was the cave, and everything in it was the shadows. Adam and Eve knew only what they were shown, and were happy with it, because that’s what they thought life was like. They didn’t know it was all just a fabrication tailored to meet their every need, nor would they have had any desire to unravel it, since your dad made them believe it was perfect, and told them that a life outside the cave—or, in Adam and Eve’s case, having knowledge of good and evil— was painful and terrifying, and that they’d die. So of course they’d stay, trapped in the illusionary bliss.  
  
“Eating the apple—or, I guess, them meeting you and doing, er, _things_ with you—was Adam and Eve finally seeing the sun. Or being given fire, I guess, if you want to mix Greek analogies. Regardless, your inteference allowed them to see and experience an existence outside of the predetermined roles set out for them. They always had the potential for independence, but you were the catalyst that made it so they knew they could chase it. Because of you, they could be their own people, choose their own paths, actually know what it feels like to be alive, _truly_ alive, warts and all. And yeah, it sucks sometimes, but where would humans be if they’d never left Eden? We wouldn’t have grown, wouldn’t have changed, wouldn’t have known there was something better for us. We’d still be stuck in a garden, forever, believing that was all there was.  
  
“And, of course, you could always say I don’t know any better myself, because life for me has always had its ups and downs, so I don’t really know what perfection is like. But you know how the allegory goes; the escaped prisoner, after seeing the sunlight, is blinded by the darkness upon their return to the cave, because they’ve grown used to the light of the outside world. The shadows that used to be their entire existence became little more than a part of the lie that once oppressed them. So the way I see it, if I had the choice to be in the Garden of Eden with all the same restrictions as Adam and Eve, and still have all my memories, I wouldn’t take it. Better a bittersweet sunlight than a beautiful darkness, you know.”  
  
“Like The Matrix,” Lucifer suggested hesitantly. “The red or blue pill. Truth or fiction.”  
  
“Yeah, exactly! And you know which one Neo chose.”  
  
“The truth.”  
  
Chloe nodded. “And once you know it, there’s no going back. It isn’t perfect, but at least it’s genuine. I like being free to make mistakes, to make my own choices. And while I’ve had my share of misery, I’ve had my share of happinesses too. I mean, if life was perfect, I never would’ve become a detective, and then I wouldn’t have had Trixie. I wouldn’t have met you.”  
  
Lucifer stared at her, his mouth open in awe. There was a noticeable shine in his eyes. “So what you’re saying,” he said slowly, “is that I did a good thing? In Eden?”  
  
“In my opinion, anyway. But like I said, I’m biased. I am dating the devil after all.”  
  
Lucifer preened at that. “I like hearing you say that.” Whatever joy he found in her words, however, quickly disappeared, and he grew subdued once more. “While I value your view on the matter, it is only your view. It doesn’t change what most people think of the Original Sin. It’s named that for a reason.”  
  
“Yeah, but think about it: what people consider a sin has changed quite a bit over the last few thousand years. Look at all the things that are completely normal nowadays that in the past could have had you punished or even killed for doing: sex before marriage, getting remarried or even just divorced, loving someone the same gender as you,” she listed, raising a finger with each addition. “Heck, even sadness used to be considered a sin, for crying out loud. Seriously, sadness. Imagine going to Hell for that.”  
  
Lucifer winced. “Many people do, unfortunately. Not because it’s a sin, of course. It’s only because guilt and sadness are so often intertwined.” He sighed heavily. “And as for those other things, no one has gone to Hell for those, not even when they were considered sins. Well, not exactly.”  
  
“What do you mean?” Chloe asked.  
  
“The acts themselves weren’t the thing that condemned people to Hell. It was the guilt they were forced into feeling—the suffocating belief that they were committing a terrible sin—that doomed them. Far too many souls I’ve seen would have been saved an eternity of suffering if they only had the opportunity to grow up in a society that wasn’t constantly telling them that they were unworthy of Heaven. Or if my father hadn’t crafted a justice system that relies entirely on one’s self-judgment,” he tagged on bitterly.  
  
Chloe looked at him, horrified. How could his father allow that? It was so...unjust. “Can’t you do something to help them? Break them out or something.”  
  
“Other than asking my demons to not torture them too harshly, not much, no.” Lucifer bowed his head. “Guilt is a hard prison to escape. The fact is, even though I do not and will never lock the doors, no one in all of history has left Hell without divine intervention.”  
  
“But you _are_ divine,” Chloe pointed out.  
  
Lucifer laughed, but there wasn’t a hint of amusement within it. “While I shall take that as a compliment, I am by no means divine. At least, not anymore. I can’t exactly smuggle any souls into the Silver City until my Heavenly ban is lifted, and as you know, that will never happen. So even if I did intervene, there isn’t much I could do. ”  
  
Chloe thought about it for a moment. “I suppose you’re in the same boat as them, huh?”  
  
Lucifer made a confused noise. “In what way? Apart from doing every one of those so-called 'sins', I don’t see the relation.”  
  
“Well, God made this whole system where the rest of someone’s existence can be determined by a few regretful things they might have done in their life; a life that really, in the scheme of things, is a drop in the ocean compared to eternity. There’s no rehabilitation, no trying to help those who deserve a second chance. If you’re doomed, you’re doomed, regardless of how great or small your crime is.”  
  
“Yes, it’s an incredibly flawed system,” Lucifer said impatiently, “but what exactly are you getting at, Detective.”  
  
“You really can’t see how your experience reflects theirs?” Chloe received only a blank look. “You disobeyed your Father, and not only were you made to feel guilty for it, you were thrown out of your home to serve a sentence in Hell for _eternity_. And for what? Wanting free-will? Independence? Those are hardly sins. Countries have literally fought wars for those things. And yet, here we are, with you still being condemned—not just by your family but by humanity too—for something that happened thousands, if not millions, of years ago. I really don’t think the punishment fits the crime. You don’t deserve it, and neither do those innocent people in Hell.”  
  
Lucifer squirmed in his seat. “I suppose I can see the comparison. But I was far from trapped. I could come and go to Earth as I pleased.”  
  
“But you were locked out of Heaven.”  
  
“For too long?” Lucifer said with a wavering smile.  
  
Chloe laughed quietly, but when she spoke, there was nothing but sincerity in her words. “Way too long.”  
  
Lucifer lied his head back against the headrest of his seat, and looked up. “I suppose I could try and do something to help the innocents of Hell. I did get my own divine intervention of sorts, after all. I’m not in Heaven, so I shan’t give Him that much credit in regards to His interference, but my days certainly got brighter after I...” He didn’t finish the thought, instead shaking his head with a huff. “Though, nowadays, I’m not so sure if it was more for my benefit or His. He certainly got what He wanted in the end.”  
  
“And what’s that?”  
  
Lucifer crossed his arms and tapped his fingers on the sleeves of his suit. “I’d rather keep that private, if it’s all the same to you. For now, anyway.”  
  
Chloe sighed. Even after all these years of knowing each other, he still had such a hard time opening up to her. She didn’t think he’d ever truly be open with her. “That's alright. Tell me when you’re ready.”  
  
The car was silent after that, but only for a short time. When Chloe was stopped by a red light, Lucifer shifted to face her.  
  
“I do have a question for you, Detective. In regards to Plato’s Cave. A hypothetical, if you will.”  
  
“Shoot.”  
  
“Consider this: what if you went back to the cave because you had to, but upon returning, you were horrified by the darkness you found there and tried to flee back into the sunlight. But before you could escape, the entrance got blocked, rendering you trapped there with no way out. Would you try everything you could to get out, knowing it was fruitless, or would you settle for the shadow-approximations of the life you knew outside so you could bear living in the darkness, despite knowing it wasn't real?”  
  
Chloe’s eyebrow skyrocketed to the top of her forehead. “Geez, that’s pretty dismal.”  
  
“I’m aware. So?” Lucifer prompted. “What would you choose?”  
  
Chloe considered the question, weighing up the pros and cons of either option. No matter which way she looked at it, there was no winning. But she was nothing if not a detective. Looking outside the box was part of her job. So, with a shrug, she said, “Neither.”  
  
“What?” Lucifer blinked, flabbergasted. “No, you can’t do that.”  
  
“Just because you gave me two options doesn’t mean they’re the _only_ options. There’s always another way. Or another way out, in this case. You just gotta find it.”  
  
Lucifer clearly wasn’t happy with her answer, but he didn’t argue the assessment. He returned to his silent brooding, and did not broach the topic again.  
  
They passed by Lux, and once again Lucifer surprised her by not insisting on a short stop to freshen up or whatever it was he usually did on his brief visits to the place during cases. He merely gave it a fleeting glance before turning to face Chloe.  
  
“What church are we going to exactly?” he asked.  
  
“You’ll see. It’s not far from here. Just past the Walk of Fame, actually.”  
  
Lucifer swallowed and adjusted the cuffs of his suit. “Oh.”  
  
“Oh?” Chloe echoed, confused by the note of sorrow in his tone. “What’s wrong?”  
  
“...I think I know the one you mean.”  
  
He didn’t speak any more of it, even after she asked again what was bothering him. She gave up, hoping he’d open up once they’d reach the scene.  
  
After she passed through the strangely vacated Hall of Fame, she turned off Hollywood Boulevard. It didn't take long for her to find a spot to park, just across the street from the church. She got out of the car and looked up at the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood.  
  
It was an old building—late 19th, early 20th century, Chloe guessed—made up of red bricks and covered with arching, gothic-style windows. While she couldn’t quite see it from the angle she was, she could just make out the faint shadow the cross that topped the church tower cast onto the sidewalk.   
  
After the emptiness of the freeway and the boulevards, the church seemed busy in comparison. A few unis lingered in the general area, taking witness statements and directing passerbys away from the scene. When one of them looked her way, she gave a wave, and the officer pointed her towards the main door that lay beyond the border of police tape. Chloe gave a nod of thanks and turned back to the car to lock it, only to pause when she discovered that Lucifer had yet to leave his seat.  
  
She knocked on the glass of the window, and Lucifer snapped his head up to look at her.  
  
“You getting out?” she asked. “Or do you want me to roll down one of the windows and leave you in here?”  
  
“Just give me a moment, if you please,” he said. “I’ll...I’ll meet you there.”  
  
“Don’t go walking off. And you better lock the car once you get out,” Chloe told him. She walked off, and crossed the street, barely needing to look both ways as she did because, while there were people lingering around, there was still a noticeable lack of cars. It was going to be a weird day, she could just tell.  
  
“Hey,” she greeted the patrol officer—whose name Chloe couldn’t quite place, something starting J or G—who stood beside the church entrance. “Is Ella here yet?”  
  
The officer smiled, but it seemed rather forced, her eyes not reflecting the happy persona she was trying to display. “Yeah, she’s inside.”  
  
Chloe had a feeling to why exactly the officer seemed so rattled. “Did you see the victim?”  
  
The officer nodded, and shifted from foot to foot. “I did.” She let out a breath. “ _Mierda_ . Sorry, I shouldn’t be so messed up about it, but I’ve never seen a dead body like that one before.”  
  
“Are you alright?”  
  
The officer waved her off. “I’m not going to throw up or anything, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’ll be alright in a little while.” She brushed a hand down her chest and straightened out her uniform and her posture. “Would you like help with anything else?”  
  
Chloe went to tell her ‘no’, but the shine of red on the fabric of the officer’s shirt caught her eye. Chloe frowned, and stared at the spreading stain.  
  
“You’re bleeding,” Chloe said.  
  
“Oh?” the officer said, looking down at herself. When she noticed the splattering of blood on her shirt, she pressed her hand to the area above her heart. When she pulled her palm away, blood dribbled down her fingertips. She made a surprised noise in her throat. “Oh, wow, I guess I am.”  
  
“Do you need First Aid?”  
  
“Nah, I should be fine,” the officer said, waving Chloe away with her bloodied hand. She grimaced. “But I will go get this cleaned up, if that’s alright.”  
  
“Yeah, that’s fine,” Chloe said, still staring at the blood. There was a lot of it. “Just send one of the other officers to substitute you while you’re gone.”  
  
“Will do,” the officer replied with a salute. She walked off.  
  
Straight into Lucifer. They both stumbled back, surprised by the collision. They mumbled their apologies distractedly, but as they went to pass each other, they simultaneously appeared to recognise who exactly they’d run into.  
  
“Oh, hey Lucifer,” the officer chirped. “How are you? I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever.”  
  
Lucifer didn’t seem to match her excitement. He stared down at her with alarm, which only grew tenfold when he glanced down at the blood that covered the front of her shirt. He went uncharacteristically pale at the sight.  
  
“I bet I look quite the sight, huh,” the officer said with a smile. “Don’t worry, I’m fine.”  
  
Lucifer said nothing.  
  
“O...kay. Good talk. Anyway, I better be going,” the officer said, taking a step to pass Lucifer.  
  
Lucifer latched onto the officer’s arm and stopped her in her place, and spoke so softly that Chloe almost missed it. “You don’t have to go.”  
  
“Sorry.” The officer gestured at her bloodied shirt with her free arm. “I can’t stay here like this.”  
  
“I can fix it.”  
  
“I’m sorry, Lucifer, but what’s done is done. You can't really do anything to change that,” she said with a shrug. She gently pried herself free of his grip. “See you later, _diablo_ .”  
  
She strode off, and disappeared around the corner. Lucifer watched her go with a crestfallen expression. Chloe couldn’t fathom why. It’s not like the officer had done anything to warrant it; it’d be understandable if the officer had said something cruel or saddening, but all she’d done was be polite and cheery. Chloe frowned. There was something she was missing, she could tell.  
  
“You friends with all the rookies, huh?” Chloe said.  
  
Lucifer blinked back to reality, and turned to her. Some of the blood on the officer’s shirt had made its way on the sleeve of his suit, and Chloe just knew he’d complain about that the minute he noticed.   
  
“You could say that,” he said.  
  
Gosh, he was being really weird today. Chloe sighed. “You want to head in?”  
  
“Not particularly,” he told her, but approached her nonetheless. “Let’s just get this over and done with.”  
  
Lucifer walked slowly towards the door, as if he was delaying his approach in the hopes that Chloe was any minute away from telling him they were at the wrong address and that they could leave. But Chloe didn’t say it, and she waited patiently for him to reach her.  
  
“I’m guessing you don’t like this place?”  
  
“I’d be lying if I said I did,” Lucifer told her, glaring at the building like it was a snake about to strike.  
  
“You don’t have to come in if you don’t want to. I can do this bit on my own.”  
  
Lucifer gave her a disbelieving look. “I’m no coward, nor am I disloyal. If you go in, so do I.”  
  
“But you don’t have—”  
  
“No, Detective, I stay by your side. We’re partners.”  
  
And with that, he marched inside, leaving her with little choice but to follow. 


	3. That's The Spirit!

While the outside of the church looked old and untouched for decades, the interior was a far different story.  
  
Though it retained a traditional look, it was obvious that the place had been recently refurbished. The pews were freshly painted, and the red carpet that ran down the laneway was clean in a way that only new things could be. Votive candles still in their prime lined the walls of the church, their dim flickers overpowered by the sunlight that streamed in through the stain-glass window—which bore the simple design of a red cross—and the far grander one that sat just above the entryway and in opposition to the other. It was all the makings of a beautiful church.  
  
If not for the fact that right in the middle of the laneway, a body hung from the rathers by a noose, with skin blackened to an unrecognisable crisp.  
  
“Oh my goodness,” Chloe whispered as she took in the sight. Even after all her years of working as a detective, she wasn’t completely immune to the gore that she saw on a day-to-day basis. Just seeing the aftermath of this cruelty was enough to make her stomach roll.  
  
That poor person. 

“This certainly isn't the scene I was expecting,” Lucifer said beside her.

Chloe shot him a glare. How could that be his first thought in all of this? "Right. And what exactly _were_ you expecting?"

“A lot of blood, some tearful declarations, and just a touch of emotional trauma.” At Chloe's confused expression, he said, “At least that's what I've come to expect from churches.”

Oh, right. No wonder he was being so weird about coming here. Chloe took his hand into hers and squeezed it sympathetically. “Just because that happened with Father Frank and Uriel doesn’t mean—”  
  
Lucifer ripped his hand out her grip and scowled. “You shouldn’t know about Uriel. I never told you.”  
  
“Uh, r-right,” Chloe stuttered. She hadn’t even realised she’d said the name until he pointed it out. “Sorry.”  
  
Her words didn’t seem to help the matter at all. Chloe wasn’t sure if it was her eyes playing tricks on her or not, but the church seemed to darken around them along with Lucifer’s souring glare.  
  
“Speaking tongues, nightmares, now this?” he sneered. “Are you doing this on purpose? To hurt me? To destroy the only good thing I have left in my life?”  
  
“Lucifer, I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Chloe said, stepping back with a nervous swallow. She had no idea what was up his ass today but she really, _really_ didn’t like it.  
  
Lucifer narrowed his eyes, and looked her up and down. Chloe stayed frozen under his scrutiny, not even daring to breathe. He didn’t seem to find whatever it was he was looking for, because he withdrew with a frown. To Chloe’s relief, the sinister air around him faded away, leaving behind only awed confusion.  
  
“You really don’t, do you?” he said. 

“Hey guys!” Ella greeted with a wave, a thankful interruption.  
  
She was wearing her usual get-up, with her Forensics jacket thrown over a shirt that cheerily read ‘Everything is Fine’ as a cartoon snake had its jaw around the head of a very nervous rodent. It was one Chloe had seen before, she was sure of it, but it was enough to make her crack a smile.  
  
“Hey Ella,” she said. She gave one more glance to Lucifer—who seemed to have settled into something resembling normality, with that kind smile he usually reserved for Ella planted on his face—before she marched over to Ella and the body. She got out a pair of nitrile gloves from her pocket, and donned the air of professionalism that was expected of her at work.  
  
“So, what can you tell us about the vic?” she asked. “Any ID?”

“Nope, nada. The body is burned completely beyond recognition. And that’s not an understatement. I don’t know their race, sex, hair colour, eye colour, nothing. We’re gonna have to wait on the dental records and DNA to get us an identification. Until then, we’ve got ourselves a Joan Doe.”  
  
“‘Joan’?” Chloe asked.  
  
“Well, since I can’t determine their biological sex, and we don’t know their ID, I thought it’d be best to keep it gender-neutral, you know. So, Joan,” Ella said with a shrug.  
  
Chloe took out her steno pad. “Any witnesses?”  
  
“Nope,” Ella said, popping the ‘p’. “And whoever found the body called it in anonymously, so we’ve got no help there.”  
  
“Not another one,” Lucifer whispered.  
  
“Not another what?” Chloe asked, turning around. She sighed in irritation when she found that Lucifer wasn’t even looking at the body, and seriously, what was the whole point of bringing him along if he wasn’t even going to pretend to focus on the task at hand. But her irritation soon turned to confusion when she realised the expression on his face was far from being bored. Whatever had his focus was enough to make him tremble.  
  
Concerned, Chloe followed his line of sight towards the far right corner of the church, where a woman stood staring at the two of them with a sharp glare.  
  
The woman’s attire was what immediately caught Chloe’s attention; it was like she’d come straight from an Ancient Rome cosplay convention, if those sorts of things even happened in Los Angeles. Who was she kidding, of course they did. Whatever the reason for the woman’s get-up, she clearly was committed to it. She had her hair wrapped into a bun upon her head, and wore a white, ankle-length chiton. As for shoes, she must have done away with them at some point because she was completely barefoot.  
  
Chloe really hoped the woman had shoes somewhere; walking around L.A. streets without footwear was not for the faint of heart.  
  
None of the CSIs seemed to be paying her any attention, despite her costume and a face that many could describe as angelic. Considering she was lingering around an open crime scene, there was no way they’d be so blasé about her presence. Chloe nodded her head towards the woman.

"Is that lady allowed to be here?" Chloe asked Ella. “Does she know something about the case?”

Ella looked at the corner, then back at Chloe, and then back at the corner once more. "Er, what lady?"  
  
“That one,” Chloe said, this time pointing with her finger straight at the lady in question.  
  
Ella squinted. “Uh, yeah, I have no idea who you’re pointing at. There’s no one over there.”  
  
Chloe couldn’t help but make a disbelieving noise. “But she’s right there, can’t you—”

“Detective,” Lucifer warned under his breath. “Just leave it.”  
  
“But you can see her too,” Chloe hissed back.  
  
“That really doesn’t attest to much, I’m afraid. I’m a celestial.”  
  
“Yeah, but _I’m_ not.”  
  
“While that may be the case, you are more predisposed towards the supernatural than most humans.”  
  
“What does that—”  
  
“What’re you guys whisper-fighting about?” Ella said.

Chloe’s word fell away, and she gritted her teeth, not knowing how to address the topic at hand while Ella was present. This sort of supernatural-or-whatever-it-was nonsense was the stuff Lucifer could get away with, but her? She could lose her job if someone so much as suspected she wasn’t of the right state of mind. She gave Lucifer a look, prompting him to speak and use his natural charm to dispel the situation. He straightened, and brushed down the fabric of his suit.  
  
“Apologies, Miss Lopez. We were merely discussing the nature of perception.”  
  
Ella didn’t even have to say ‘what?’, the word almost tangible in her expression. Chloe had a feeling her own face matched it to a tee.  
  
“That is to say, what one may see in their own perception of reality, another may not,” Lucifer clarified, sending Chloe a significant look.  
  
“Oooh, I gotcha,” Ella said, clicking her tongue as she shot in a finger gun. “Kinda like ghosts, right. Some people can see ‘em, but most don’t. Lemme tell you, that can lead to some pretty awkward situations. Er, not that I’m saying I have personal experience with that sort of thing. Because I don’t. Nope. Wouldn’t know a ghost if I saw one.”  
  
“Well, you wouldn’t see one, because they don’t exist,” Lucifer said.  
  
“But,” Chloe started, but she was cut off by Lucifer raising his hand.  
  
“But I will go check out whatever it is that is worrying the Detective, if only to give her peace of mind.”  
  
He headed off before either Chloe or Ella could so much as get a word in. Despite his cocksure gait, there was something almost like nervousness in the way he fidgeted with his cuffs.  
  
Or was it fear?  
  
“I know this probably sounds super duper hypocritical coming from me,” Ella said, “but you guys are kinda being weird today.”  
  
Chloe grimaced. “Sorry,” she murmured.  
  
“Nah, Decker, it’s fine,” Ella said with a warm smile. “We all have weird days. I won’t hold it against you. So, anyway, you want to do your detective stuff now?”  
  
Chloe nodded, glad for the lead-in. “Absolutely. Alright, so what was the cause of death? Burning or hanging?”  
  
“Both.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Crazy, right? But that’s what the evidence points toward. Our vic here was burned and hanged at the same time, and died of both simultaneously.”  
  
Chloe couldn’t help but picture the sight: a human-shaped ball of fire swinging in the air like a terrifying wrecking-ball. “Wouldn’t that have burnt the rope?”  
  
“It should’ve, yeah. The killer must have slathered it with some anti-inflammatory or something. I’ve taken some samples to test back at the lab.”  
  
“What about the time of death?”  
  
Ella shook her head. “I tried to pinpoint it, but it’s pretty much impossible to determine without doing tests for that as well.”  
  
“Is there any evidence that we have now that you don’t need to do tests for?” Chloe tried. “Fingerprints, maybe? Any security cameras?”  
  
Ella’s apologetic look was answer enough.  
  
“Damn it,” Chloe cursed. “Whoever did this knew what they were doing.”  
  
“Well, at least we know _that_ for certain.”  
  
“Alright, so we’re going to need...”  
  
She lost the rest of her train of thought when a howl of music drifted through the church. She frowned, and looked around for the source of the sound, eventually settling on the chancel of the church, where an organ was situated. Had that always been there? She couldn’t remember seeing it when they came in.  
  
The organ released another howl, and then another, in a slow and eerie mimicry of music.  
  
Ella didn’t seem too bothered by it, far more focused on Chloe and her unfinished sentence. “Need what?”  
  
But Chloe was only half-listening to her.  
  
“Is someone playing the organ?”  
  
Ella quirked her head, and somehow managed to give a smile that was confused yet considerate. “What’re you talking ‘bout? It’s crazy quiet in here. There’s not even a reverb, which is _nuts_. Churches are all about that reverb, you know. I used to run around trying to find the perfect place to get the best echo. Probably made me look a bit loco, but hey, it was fun. Lucifer almost tempted me into doing it again recently actually...Well, okay, I say ‘almost’. It was more like 'completely'. I totally did it. I have no regrets.”  
  
“So you can’t...” Chloe trailed away, uncertain. Maybe she was hearing things. Great. “I’m just going to check out that area,” she said, vaguely pointing towards the organ.  
  
Ella gave a Gallic shrug. “Sure. I’m not stopping you. Not like there’s much else I can tell you about the case anyway.”

Chloe wandered up into the chancel and rounded the instrument. To her relief, someone _was_ playing the organ. A middle-aged man sat on the organ stool, wearing an black, old-fashioned suit that matched the colour of his bushy beard. 

“Oh, hello there,” he said when he noticed her. He had a noticeable French accent. “Can I help you?”  
  
“I’m Detective Decker. I’m here about the body that was found here.”  
  
“The dead do show up in the strangest of places, don’t they?” the man said with a smile.  
  
Chloe laughed politely and gave a nod. She tapped her pen on her steno pad and held it at the ready. “I'm just going to get your witness statement, if that's alright. Were you here when the victim was killed?”  
  
“They were already dead for a long time before I came around.”

Damn. There goes that potential lead.. “Can you tell me anything else, Mr...I’m sorry, I didn’t get your name.”

“Oh, pardon me, where are my manners? I'm Camille.”  
  
“Camille?” Chloe prompted.  
  
“Saint-Saëns.”

“Camille Saint-Saëns?” Chloe laughed sceptically. “Right. Like the French composer?”

He beamed. “Ah, so you've heard of me.”

“Heard of....” Wait. No way. There was absolutely no way. “You're not...You can't be.”

He shrugged, but didn’t say anything to confirm or dispute her revelation. He produced an apple from his pocket and took a bite, and played a few keys on the organ with his spare hand, somehow managing to make it sound elegant if slightly out of tune even as he munched noisily away. He left the apple in his mouth as he added his other hand to the mix and began to play in earnest.  
  
Chloe recognised the tune after a few bars.  
  
It was the Danse Macabre. Chloe felt chills run down her spine.  
  
“But you’re”—she leaned in, glancing around as she did, and in a whisper, said—“dead.”  
  
Saint-Saëns pulled the apple from his mouth only to say “Ironic, isn’t it?” before taking another bite and continuing to play.

Chloe could only stare wide-eyed. She was talking to a dead person. An actual dead person, one who had been so for over a hundred years. She had thought nothing else could shock her, after learning the truth about Lucifer, but come on. Ghosts? Seriously.  
  
And one playing the Dance of Death, no less. Way to rub it in.  
  
But as much as she wanted to have a few hours to deal with all of this, she was at a crime scene, and someone was dead. Well, someone else was dead. And it was up to her to solve their murder and bring them justice.  
  
She put her steno pad away, realising there was no way she could write down anything he would say and present it as evidence without everyone thinking she was pulling their legs.  
  
“So...er, Mr. Saint-Saëns,” Chloe started awkwardly, having no idea how to go about this. “Do you perhaps, by any chance, know who killed the victim over there?”  
  
He set the apple aside, and it withered away to nothing before Chloe’s eyes. Saint-Saëns pressed his fist against his chin and hummed thoughtfully. “It was quite a few people.”  
  
Alright, she could work with this. “Do you have names? Descriptions?”  
  
“I don’t, no, but you needn’t worry about any of that.”  
  
“Why not?”  
  
“Because they’re all dead now,” he declared cheerily. “So unless you want to dig up their remains and arrest them, there’s not much you can do.”  
  
“Did...,” she started. Gosh, she couldn’t believe she was even saying this. She swallowed. “Did ghosts kill her?”  
  
He chuckled. “No, the killers were alive when they executed your victim.”  
  
“Executed?” Chloe echoed, clinging to the one thing that made sense. ‘Execute’ implied the vic had been killed as punishment for some crime. “Did the victim wrong them somehow?”  
  
“Not in the sense you're thinking, I’m sure,” said Saint-Saëns. “I wasn’t there myself, but I know the tale. The killers thought your victim here to be a disciple of the Devil himself, you see, and because of this, they were sentenced to death. The only way out of the charge was to incriminate another, or to confess your crime and ask for forgiveness. Of course, both of those choices meant you had to lie. To speak the truth of your innocence was to side with Satan. And so your poor victim, choosing to be true to themselves, was killed in the name of misguided justice. Burned, hanged, tortured; whatever had to be done to make them suffer for the sin of honesty.”  
  
Chloe gulped. “That sounds like a witch-hunt.”  
  
Saint-Saëns smiled. “Exactly,” he said. He looked past her. “I wonder what your friend thinks of them, hm.”

Chloe glanced over her shoulder, right towards Lucifer, who was still speaking to the woman who found the body. He seemed even more anxious than he had when he’d left, fiddling with his cufflinks to an excessive degree and habitually brushing a hand through his hand, slowly but surely undoing the work he’d put into it that morning.  
  
It was then that Saint-Saëns’ words sunk in. In researching Lucifer, she had read quite a bit about the witch-hunts of the past. A good chunk of them had been the result of people being believed to be consulting with and serving the Devil, and thousands of innocent people had died or been tortured because of it. All because of lies and a fear of that which was different.  
  
While she had spoken to Lucifer about them in passing, she’d never actually asked about what he thought about the witch-hunts, or if he’d even been involved in some way in any of them, but she had a feeling the subject was a rather touchy one. No doubt he felt somewhat responsible, regardless of his actual role.  
  
“While I do enjoy your good company, Ms. Decker,” Saint-Saëns said, startling Chloe out of her thoughts, “I’d like to return to my music, if you please.”  
  
“Oh, right, sorry,” she said, stepping back. “I’ll...just be going.” She went to step away, but stopped herself. If she was going to use any of this information in the case, maybe it’d be good to have proof of the witnesses' existence, even if said witness was long dead. “Actually, can I borrow just a little bit more of your time? I just want to take a picture of you, if that's okay.”  
  
Saint-Saëns waved for her to go ahead.  
  
Chloe took out her phone and snapped several photos. Satisfied, she put the phone back into her pocket and went to give her thanks, but when she looked up, Saint-Saëns was gone. The organ stool was empty, with no evidence left behind to show anyone had been there at all.  
  
The organ continued to play, unseen hands pressing down on the keys. Chloe retreated as quickly as she could.  
  
When she reached Lucifer, the woman in the costume was gone. He looked as rattled as she was feeling, his mind in some dark place thousands of miles away. It wasn’t until Chloe placed her hand around his that he seemed to realise she was there. The smile he gave her was as fragile as an eggshell.  
  
“Apologies for running off on you earlier, but I’m sure you did quite fine without me,” he said. When Chloe didn’t answer, he frowned. “Are you alright, Detective?”  
  
“I think I just talked to the ghost of Camille Saint-Saëns,” she said, dazed.

Lucifer sighed, long and deep. He unwound his hand out of hers. "Not a ghost, " he corrected, looking more glum than shocked.

Somehow, his words weren’t comforting at all. “Right. So not a ghost, but not _not_ Saint-Saëns?"

"Well, how am I to know? I didn't talk to him."

"Would you know it was him if you saw him?” She took out her phone and opened up the gallery. Without looking at the photos, she gave it to Lucifer. He flipped through them, but rather than look at them with a glint of recognition, he seemed to grow steadily unsettled. Eventually, he looked up to Chloe with a wince.  
  
“Unfortunately,” he said, raising the phone up for her to see the screen. “I don’t think these will be of any help.”  
  
Chloe frowned. The screen was completely black. For a second, Chloe thought the phone had turned off, but when she took it from Lucifer and thumbed the screen, the icons popped up at her touch. She flipped through her gallery. Every photo was the same, even the ones she had taken yesterday and the day before, much to her horror. All those photos of Trixie...gone.  
  
Except, not all of them were completely black, she realised. While the surroundings and everyone else in the photos had been completely erased, Lucifer remained, a lone figure in negative space. Sitting on furniture that was no longer there, smiling at people who seemed not to exist.  
  
Chloe numbly returned the phone to her pocket.  
  
“But I do know of whom you speak,” Lucifer said. “I was one of his piano tutors when he was a child. And I may...have also been the last person he ever saw when he was alive.”

Chloe blinked back to life. She could focus on this. She had to. “Did you visit him at his deathbed or something?”

“No, he, uh, died of a heart attack.” Lucifer squirmed under Chloe’s raised eyebrow. “Very suddenly. Rather...unnaturally.”

“Please don’t be implying what I think you’re implying.”

“What? No, I didn’t kill him. Don't be absurd....Though I suppose I did trigger his death. Accidentally.”

“How the hell do you do that _accidentally_?”

"Well, he was a very old man by that point,” Lucifer explained. “And I was in Algiers at the time and heard he was around. I just wanted to talk to him, see how his life was going, maybe even ask him to play me a ditty, but suppose he must have recognised me. Obviously, I hadn't aged a day in over 60 years, and from what I’ve been told, that can be a tad alarming. And you know how the elderly are: too great a shock and well..."

Only Lucifer could accidentally kill someone by his appearance alone. Chloe rolled her eyes. “I imagine that ruined your day quite a bit, huh.”

“Yes, it was rather a regretful affair.”

Chloe crossed her arms. “So, do you know why not-a-ghost-but-definitely-dead Saint-Saëns is here?”

“To play at a graveyard rave?” Lucifer suggested.

“Lucifer, be serious.”

“It was a serious suggestion.”

“Lucifer, we are in a church in the middle of Los Angeles. Why would a 19th century French composer be hanging out around here? Other than to haunt his killer—”

“I didn't—”

“Fine. His _accidental_ killer,” Chloe corrected. Lucifer rolled his eyes at her lack of effort. “Should I be worried? He’s not going to try to get vengeance on you, is he? Should we try and find someone who can, I don’t know, ‘ghost-bust’ him?”

“Again, he is not a bloody ghost.”

“What is he then?” Chloe asked, irritated. “And please don’t say zombie.”

“He's a manifestation,” Lucifer said unhelpfully.

Chloe huffed. “How’s that any different from a ghost?”

“I assure you, there’s a big difference.”  
  
“Fine,” Chloe sighed. “A _manifestation_ then. I still don’t get why he’s here. It just doesn’t make sense.” She perked up. “Actually, he did know something about the person who died. He said they were killed because they were thought to be a witch.”

Lucifer shrunk in on himself. “Oh,” he said.

“I’m guessing that hits a little bit too close to home,” Chloe said as sympathetically as possible.  
  
Lucifer nodded, but apart from that, he did little to respond to her question. His hands clenched into fists.  
  
“Um. How was your chat with the lady?” Chloe said, trying to change the topic. Clearly talking about witches brought up way too much bitter history. “Did she tell you anything of interest?”  
  
“No, unfortunately,” he said quietly. “She...wasn’t here at the time of the murder. But we did catch up, in a way. It has been quite some time since I talked to her last.”

“You know her?” Right, of course he did. He probably knew more than half of L.A. intimately.  
  
“I may have spoken to her once or twice before, yes.”  
  
“I’m guessing that’s code for ‘we spent the night together’?” Chloe said.  
  
“I don’t sleep with everyone I meet, Detective,” he said, sincerely affronted. “You’re a good case in point.”  
  
“Not for lack of trying, though.”  
  
He huffed. “Well, in this case, you’re wrong. Hypatia and I never slept together.” he said. “She took her vow of chastity very seriously.”  
  
It took a second for the name to click in her head.  
  
“I’m sorry, did you just say Hypatia? As in Hypatia of Alexandria?”  
  
“The philosopher?” Ella said from behind them.  
  
Lucifer and Chloe leapt away from each other like children who’d just been caught stealing from the cookie jar, and turned towards Ella to find her looking between the two of them with a raised eyebrow.  
  
“You guys talking philosophy, huh?” Ella continued.  
  
Lucifer made a sound that was neither agreement or denial. Chloe had heard him use it several times when he was stuck in a situation where telling the truth would lead to a prickly situation, and anything else he could say to deflect would be a lie. Ella didn’t seem to recognise the sound for what it was, and heard what she wanted to hear.  
  
“Can I join in? I love philosophy.”  
  
“Yes, I do recall you telling me that once,” Lucifer said. “Though, how a science nerd such as yourself became enamoured with such a nebulous course of study still confounds me.”  
  
“Yeah, well, one of my priests suggested I study up on it when I was younger, to better understand ethics in regards to my faith and what it means to be morally good, and I guess I fell in love with it.” She bounced on her toes and grinned, excited. “Gosh, it’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to really talk about this sort of stuff. Alright, so first things first: who’s your favourite philosopher? Wait, lemme guess: it’s Kant for you Lucifer, right? Because he’s all about not lying and that’s basically your whole thing.”  
  
Lucifer smiled puckishly. “Yes, I suppose you could say I’m a Kant enthusiast.”  
  
“Lucifer,” Chloe reprimanded.  
  
“What?” he said innocently.  
  
Chloe responded by rolling her eyes and shaking her head.  
  
“What of you, Miss Lopez?” Lucifer went on. “Are you a Confucius girl? Or maybe Condorcet, hm? Foucault?”  
  
Ella hummed and hawed before shrugging. “You know what, I actually don’t think I have a fave philosopher. Sure, I have some I prefer but I couldn’t pick just once, y’know. But I really like meliorism. That is totally my jam.”  
  
Chloe vaguely knew the term, but she couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it meant. “What’s that?” she asked.  
  
Ella lit up with an I’m-glad-you-asked expression. “Well, basically meliorism says that hey, the world isn’t perfect, but it can and will improve over time, especially if we put our minds to it. If you’re good and kind, and try your best to fix what’s broken, then you can help make the world a better place. I think that’s pretty sweet. 

"And I also think you can apply it to people too, not just the world as a whole. No one starts off as all good, and you totally shouldn’t expect people to be when they haven't had anyone to teach them and treat them in a way that helps them to understand and practice it. It’s through being treated kindly and compassionately that you can grow and improve as a person, and in being kind to others, help others improve as well. It's kind of a team effort.”  
  
“While it’s an admirable sentiment, Miss Lopez,” Lucifer said, “it’s incredibly idealistic.”  
  
“Oh, a cynic, are you?” Ella said.  
  
“A realist, darling. Call it a product of an unnaturally long lifespan,” Lucifer said, grinning with a cocky air around him. “It doesn’t matter how kind you are, how good you are, because at the end of the day it’s the people in power who have the final verdict. And you can fight and struggle, but they will always win. The system you wish to improve is the self-same system they have built to benefit the bastards on top and any with the same sinister whims as them, while dooming any who dare show a whit of compassion. So why bother? Better to just do whatever you want, be it vice or virtue, because you’re going to lose anyway.”  
  
Ella gave him a knowing look. “But you don’t really believe that, do you?”  
  
Lucifer flinched, and before Chloe’s eyes, he changed. His forcefully straight posture fell away to something less imposing, and the sharp gleam in his eye softened to a glisten. One by one, Ella’s words stripped him of the cocky guise that had held him buoyant throughout his stream of vitriolic words. The last thing to go was his grin, which fell away with a sigh.  
  
“I used to,” he said softly. “For a very long time, actually. One could say it was my entire mindset. But I’ve recently come to realise that blaming your own wickedness on the wickedness of others doesn’t justify it. If anything, it makes it worse.”  
  
“Yeah, and thinking like that just leads to a whole 'I'm going to hurt other people because people hurt me' mentality.”  
  
“Yes, exactly,” Lucifer said. “And that doesn’t get us anywhere but stuck in...well, an endless loop.”  
  
The sombre tone of their argument didn't last very long. Ella lit up with a grin.

“Hey, speaking of philosophy, you should totally watch ‘ _The Good Place_ ’ with me one time, dude,” she said, punching him lightly on the shoulder. “I bet you’d love it. It’s all about imperfect people who are brought together and through their kindness and love to each other, grow to be better people. Tonnes of philosophical stuff in there too to sink your teeth into. And hey, they even go into how the system is working against us, so there’s that. Maybe it can give you some ideas.”  
  
Lucifer quirked his head. “Ideas? About what? Another rebellion?”  
  
“About fixing Hell.” The sentence hung alone in the air for a fleeting moment, Ella’s voice strangely serious as she said it. Then she winked and shot him a finger gun. “Because you’re the ‘Devil’.”  
  
“I can practically hear the quotation marks. For the last time, I am _actually_ the Devil.”  
  
“Think on it, buddy,” she said, ignoring his last remark. She turned to Chloe. “I’m going to finish up here and then head back to the lab. I’ll see you at the precinct?”  
  
“Yeah, we’ll meet you there. Come on, Lucifer.”  
  
She dragged him off before he could protest, and didn’t stop until they were far away from prying eyes. Then and only then did she say in a half-frenzied yell, “You actually spoke to the ghost—manifestation, _whatever_ —of Hypatia?”

“Well, she did most of the talking. Let’s just say she had a few bones to pick with me.”

“Did you accidentally kill her too?” As soon as she said it, she knew it was a stupid question. Hypatia was killed by a mob of Christian fanatics. No way Lucifer was any part of that.

“No, of course not," Lucifer said, annoyed by the implication. "Bloody hell, Detective. She merely was bothered about some things I said to her the last time we spoke.”

Chloe pinched the bridge of her nose. “So, let me get this straight: we've got a dead person who was killed because they were thought to be a witch, and the ghosts of an ancient philosopher you pissed off and a French composer you sort of killed. In a L.A. church. In October."

"Sounds quite like a game of Halloween Cluedo, wouldn’t you say?"  
  
Only he could be insouciant about this. "Was stuff like this always going on and I just didn't notice it, or is this a new development?"

"Um," Lucifer said.

"You know what, I don't want to know."

“That’s probably for the best, Detective.”  
  
“Alright, so,” Chloe said, rubbing the skin of her forehead to soothe the headache this whole situation was bringing on. “I have absolutely no idea whatsoever on how we’re going to solve this in the scheme of actual police procedure, but I suppose there’s no harm in trying. We might as well head to the precinct and check out whatever data Ella can get back.”  
  
“That’s the spirit!” Lucifer cheered.  
  
Chloe just sent him a flat look.  
  
“No? Too soon?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally, I had Ella mention 'The Good Place' after hearing Chloe say Hypatia of Alexandria, since Hypatia showed up in the final season of the show. But then I realised that the episode she appeared in was released at the start of 2020, and this story is set nebulously in 2018/19, and I didn't want to mess up timelines, so I had to scrap that particular piece of dialogue. But I did keep the mention of 'The Good Place' because why the heck not, y'know.
> 
> And as a follow-up to Lucifer's Series of Unfortunate Accidents, here's an embarrassing tale for you, to act as a not-so-short interlude between chapters: In October of 2017, I celebrated my first and so-far only proper Halloween when a friend invited over me and a few of my other friends over to hers to celebrate the occasion. We weren't going to go trick-or-treating ourselves but we were going to be out the front to gives out treats to those who came to the door, so in the spirit of the occasion I dressed up as the angel Castiel from Supernatural. I had wings and everything. A friend of mine, however, didn't recognise the character, and as we were stood out the front, she asked me who I was. 
> 
> I will state right now that I have always been a little too adept at ignoring my surroundings, and that I am socially unaware at the best of times. But one thing I am for certain is a person who almost never swears, to the point that even as an adult, my friends and family often apologise for swearing in front of me, as if they think they're corrupting my innocence and whatnot. 
> 
> But on that fateful day, I swore. And not just that, I yelled it. In front of several children. And you want to know what I said? "I'm an angel of the Lord, motherf*cker!" 
> 
> Yep...not my best moment. Just as the children's parents rushed them away in disgust, I rushed away to hide and wallow in my embarrassment while my friends laughed their arses off, and to this day, everytime I think of that memory, I groan at my complete idiocy. But I can certainly appreciate the irony of the whole situation. An angel having a foul mouth? Absolutely blasphemy. 
> 
> So, yes, that's my tale of my one and only Halloween celebration. Perhaps I will have developed tact by the time I celebrate my next.


	4. A Horrible Turn of Events

The precinct was as busy as ever. The officers and detectives went to and fro, either focused on their work or chattering away with their colleagues. There also seemed quite a few citizens lingering around in Halloween costumes, waiting for someone to come and address them. That wasn’t unusual; civilians came in all the time to drop in tips or to be interviewed, amongst other things. Everything was completely normal.  
  
Except for the eerie moaning echoing out of the Evidence room.  
  
Chloe froze on the last step of the staircase, and stared wide eyed at the entrance to Evidence. The very walls seemed to shake as unseen papers clattered to the floor and the shelves banged against the walls. Chloe had seen enough horror movies to know what that meant.

"Oh great," she muttered, too exhausted with how the day had gone so far to react with anything but sarcasm. "There's ghosts here too."

Lucifer snorted, and covered his mouth with his hand to stifle his laughter.  
  
“What?” Chloe said.

"I don't think that's ghosts, Detective," Lucifer said. “I’d recognise those moans anywhere.”  
  
Oh. _Oh._ Chloe’s face went hot.

Lucifer, shameless as ever, strode over to the door and knocked on it with the back of his knuckles. “Shouldn’t you be working, Mazikeen?”  
  
The Evidence room went silent. “I am working!” Maze called back after a lingering pause.  
  
“Oh very hard, I’m sure,” Lucifer said. “But I actually might need your expertise on an important matter, so if you’d please, could you maybe finish up?”  
  
“Ergh, fine.”  
  
Lucifer stepped back from the door, and shot Chloe an amused grin as he waited. A moment later, the door swung open to present a very annoyed Maze. Behind her, Eve was doing her best to tidy up her appearance, with little success.

It didn’t take a detective to guess at what they’d been doing. Maze and Eve's clothes were dishevelled, and strands of hair had been pulled out of place on each of their heads. Eve's cheeks were flushed, and both of their eyes were darker than usual.

Lucifer glanced between them with a widening grin.  
  
“Having some fun, were you?”  
  
“We were until you ruined it,” Maze bit out. “Couldn’t you have waited until we were done?”  
  
“I don’t have the patience to wait hours, I’m afraid.”  
  
As they continued their somewhat heated chat, Eve stepped towards Chloe, her smile as bubbly as ever.  
  
“Hey Chloe,” Eve said, waving. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I feel like we haven’t talked in ages.”  
  
Chloe gave a small wave of her own, trying to match the energy that Eve had in waves. “Uh, yeah, I guess we haven’t. But, actually, Lucifer and I are working on a case at the moment, so maybe we can talk later, yeah?”  
  
Eve beamed. “Yes, of course. I can tell you about all the stuff I did while I was away.”  
  
That made Chloe pause. She remembered Eve had disappeared, but she couldn’t remember the details of why or even when. And that wasn’t the only thing that was confusing her. “When _did_ you come back? I don’t actually recall.”  
  
Eve frowned thoughtfully and made a humming sound. “Huh. I guess I can't remember.” She giggled. “But it’s so silly to worry about all that. I’m here now. I’m happy. Maze’s happy. Lucifer’s with his first love. Everything’s the way it should be. That’s all that matters.”  
  
“First love,” Chloe echoed, her mind latching onto the term. Lucifer had called her that just before he'd left, his strange way of confessing his love to her. He hadn't brought up that day even once since he got back. Why was that?  
  
Lucifer threw his arm over her shoulder, startling her out of reverie. He pulled her tightly against his side and presented her and the others with a hollow smile.  
  
“Thank you so much for your help, Maze. Really quite insightful,” he said pleasantly, dragging Chloe back with him as he made a slow retreat. “Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have work to do.”  
  
“Sure, whatever,” Maze said. She entwined her fingers in Eve’s. “Come on. Let’s go somewhere we won’t be interrupted.”  
  
“The Penthouse?” Eve ventured.  
  
Maze scoffed. “I’m sorry, have you been there? That place doesn’t even have a lock.” She paused. “On the other hand, the possibility of being caught in the act does add a certain thrill. Hmm.”  
  
“Isn’t there anywhere else you can go?” Lucifer said. “Your room at Linda’s, perhaps. Really, just anywhere else, I don’t care. I’d rather you not have sex in my bed. It’s already a bother having to clean it after my own endeavours, let alone others.”  
  
“Who said we’d use the bed?” Maze said with a laugh, trotting off with Eve at her side.  
  
“Maze? Maze! Don’t you dare touch the piano!” he yelled after them, but they didn’t seem to hear. That, or they were ignoring him on purpose. Lucifer grumbled under his breath as he watched them go.  
  
Once he seemed to have gotten it out of his system, he unwound his hand from where it rested on Chloe's shoulder and dropped it to her hand, entwining his fingers into hers. Without a word he led her towards her desk.  
  
“What did you and Maze talk about?” Chloe asked.  
  
“Well I thought, since she was a demon, she would know how to deal with these pesky manifestations,” he explained. “But, no surprise, she knows as much as I do on the matter, so she was no help there, I’m afraid.”  
  
“Why would a demon know how to deal with ghosts?”  
  
“Manifestations,” Lucifer corrected distractedly. “And it’s because...well, manifestations are rather unruly things, unable to be controlled by normal means, thanks to the fact that they had the unfortunate habit of having a mind of their own, which can lead to untold consequences. To maintain order, I often tasked demons with handling them.”  
  
Right. That made sense, she supposed, but at the same time, it felt like something was missing in his story. “Aren’t there any other demons other than Maze that could help you?”  
  
Lucifer curled his lip. “No, and I’d rather avoid those filthy buggers for the rest of my existence, if I can help it. Besides,” he added in a kinder tone, “I have you, Detective.”  
  
Chloe sat herself at her desk and pulled the chair in close. “Alright. All of that aside, what do you want to do about our current case?”  
  
“You’re asking me?” Lucifer said, surprised.  
  
“Well, so far the only intel I’ve got came from a dead person, so it’s not like any of this is of the natural sort. So I thought, since you’re an angel with way more experience in this sort of stuff, that you should take lead.”  
  
Lucifer lit up like a child who’d just been told they were being sent a whole truck of candy. “Really?”  
  
Chloe nodded, and patted the chair beside her. “Come on, Civilian Consultant. Tell me the plan.”  
  
Lucifer sat himself in the chair and gave it a single spin before he drew it in close to Chloe. Leaning back, he crossed his legs and steepled his palms together, looking thoughtfully towards the heavens.  
  
“I suppose our first course of action,” he began, “would be to check out any religious cults or known zealots in the area that would be more than willing to murder a person suspected of witchery. Anyone with a history of violence, or an unsavoury social media profile that points towards an aggressive mentality.” Chloe jotted it down, and cued him to continue. “We could also try and meet with a few of the local pagans and wiccans and see if any of them might have an idea of who the victim is. If they really were a practicing witch, they might have been in a coven, or frequented some of the stores in L.A. that sell magical items. Surely there would be one person who would notice their absence and help us ID them.”  
  
Chloe wrote it down. Those were actually some pretty good ideas. She'd definitely look into them. “Anything else?”  
  
“Traffic cams?” Lucifer suggested.  
  
“Considering we don’t know the time of death, I don’t think those will be any help, even if there is a camera in the immediate area.”  
  
Lucifer shrugged. “Then I suppose the only other thing we can do is wait for Miss Lopez to provide us with the scientific data and whatnot.”

Chloe checked her phone for the time. Ella probably wouldn’t be back for at least another hour. “That might be a few hours. Maybe even days.”  
  
“I thought as much. Usually this is where I would depart until that time had passed, but I suppose I can’t do that now, can I? Since you’ve given me leadership.”  
  
“And now you have to wait around like the rest of us.” Chloe patted him on the shoulder in playful pity. “What a horrible turn of events for you.”  
  
Lucifer threw a hand over his eyes and sighed. “I’m so tired of waiting,” he whined.  
  
“It’s barely been a few seconds.”  
  
“I meant in general.”

Chloe shook her head with a laugh. “Right. Anyway, you didn’t say anything about the manifestations in your plan. What do you think we should do about them?”

“Yes, those,” Lucifer muttered, sitting up. He pushed his foot against the floor and sent his chair into a spin. “Well, if any more do show up, we can just ignore them and eventually they'll just go away. Problem solved.”  
  
Chloe raised an eyebrow. “You know, Lucifer, ignoring problems usually doesn’t make them go away.”  
  
Lucifer’s face darkened to a scowl, which Chloe couldn’t take all that seriously while his chair continued to spin.  
  
“Facing them usually doesn’t help either,” he grumbled. “I don’t exactly have a history of succeeding when I do. Me fixing problems is like rubbing a wine stain to clean it up; I always make it worse. This certainly proves that point.” He swept his arms around the precinct.  
  
Before Chloe could ask what he meant by that, Dan appeared before her desk, a folder in hand.  
  
“Hey,” he said, giving Lucifer a weird look as he watched his chair slowly come to a stop. “Uh, did you guys move some stuff in the Evidence room? I can’t find any of the items related to my new case.”  
  
“Oh, don’t be shy, Daniel. We both know when you say ‘guys’,” Lucifer said, doing air quotes as he did, “that you really mean me.”  
  
Dan made a face that was somewhere between ‘eh, you’re not wrong’ and ‘I’m really trying my best not to be rude right now so could you please just let it slide’.  
  
“As for the matter of your misplaced evidence,” Lucifer went on, “you can place your blame elsewhere. That would be Maze and Eve’s fault, not mine.”  
  
“What were they doing... _oh_ .” Dan pursed his lips. “Right. Sorry for thinking it was you, man.”  
  
“Apology accepted.”  
  
“How is your case going, by the way?” Chloe asked. She wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but she thought it polite to ask.  
  
Dan made a so-so gesture. “Not great. There’s just so much stuff that doesn’t make sense, you know. We still can’t figure out how the window was smashed in from the outside, or why there was blood and feathers everywhere. It’s just plain weird. Ella’s been trying her best to help, but even she’s stumped.”  
  
Chloe went still, and she saw Lucifer do the same beside her. Blood and feathers, _and_ a broken window? Either it was a very eerie coincidence or....  
  
“Remind me,” she said as evenly as she could, “who’s murder are you solving again?”  
  
Dan frowned. “Lieutenant Pierce’s.”  
  
The room seemed to shrink around her, to a claustrophobic and nauseating degree. She could have sworn Lucifer had sent her own chair spinning by the way her vision swirled and twisted.  
  
“But...but that happened almost a year ago,” she whispered.  
  
“Chloe? Are you okay?” Dan asked, reaching over to her but hesitating half way. “Should I get someone to help?”  
  
Chloe struggled to draw in breath. “No, no, I’m fine.”  
  
“You don’t seem fine. Either of you,” he added.  
  
The words made Chloe pull herself out of her spiral and look over to Lucifer. He was staring off into space with blank eyes, his skin pale. It was like he wasn’t even there.  
  
“Lucifer.” No answer. She tugged on his sleeve. “Lucifer?”  
  
“I enjoyed it,” he mumbled hollowly.  
  
That was enough to shock her back to herself, well and truly. She glanced at Dan, and waved him back, silently asking for space. Dan acquiesced and stepped back with a confused, but concerned frown. She sent him a brief smile of thanks before focusing on Lucifer.  
  
“What did you enjoy, Lucifer?” she asked calmly.  
  
“That’s why he’s here too, isn’t it,” he said, his voice wavering. “Because I enjoyed it.”  
  
“Enjoyed what?” Chloe tried again.  
  
“Sending him to Hell.”  
  
Chloe hadn’t been there when it’d happened, but she knew what Lucifer had done. He’d been alone, standing over Pierce’s body, with Maze’s knife as the murder weapon. There was no one else it could’ve been. But hearing him say it, admit it, still made her shiver with discomfort.

To hear he’d enjoyed it...she really didn’t know what to think.  
  
But right now, that didn’t matter. Lucifer was coming undone right before her, so she did the first thing that came to mind. She pulled him close and wrapped her arms around him.  
  
“It’s okay,” she soothed. “I don’t blame you. He was going to kill you. You did what you had to do.”  
  
He sunk into her embrace, his hands tentatively coming to meet her back.  
  
“I thought I’d gotten over this, moved on from it,” he whispered hoarsely into her collarbone. “But it’s clear now that, deep down, I haven’t. I suppose I never will, not really. There’s no coming back from what I did.”  
  
“Yes, there is. You shouldn’t let one mistake define the rest of your life.”  
  
Lucifer huffed, and pulled himself free of the hug. “My whole life has been defined by my mistakes, Detective. Why should this be any different?”  
  
“Because _you’re_ different. You’ve changed.”  
  
“People are always saying that to me,” he said, his voice as stinging as frost. “As if that makes up for everything I’ve done. As if I had to change in order for people to even tolerate my presence. It really makes me think: how wicked must I have been before I met all of you that showing even a whit of kindness was enough for everyone to think I’d changed.”  
  
“Lucifer, you weren’t wicked,” Chloe insisted.  
  
“Monstrous, then. Depraved. Rotten. _Poisonous._ Whatever adjective you think fits me best.”  
  
Chloe placed her hand over his. “You’re none of those things, Lucifer, and you never were.”  
  
But it was clear she wasn’t getting through to him. If anything, she seemed only to be frustrating him. He pulled his hand free of hers and in a rush stood to his feet, his chair rattling as it sailed across the floor.  
  
“Why am I even listening to you?” he snapped. “Nothing you say is true! You’re just saying what I would want you to say to me, everything I’d want to hear, and that’s so much worse.”  
  
“I’m sorry, Lucifer, I didn’t—”  
  
“Stop! Please, stop,” Lucifer pleaded, retreating away from her.  
  
“Hey, pal, are you alright?” Dan said, breaking into the imaginary bubble of space. Even when Lucifer shot him a scathing look, he didn’t back down. “You seem a bit distressed.”  
  
“Oh, do I?” Lucifer spat. “Good to know you are capable at your job after all, Detective Douche.”  
  
“Come on, man, I’m just trying to help.”  
  
A bitter laugh flew from Lucifer’s mouth. “Why would _you_ want to help me? You hate me!”  
  
“What?” Dan blinked, visibly flustered. “No, I don’t.”  
  
“Says the man who has been hellbent on blaming me for Charlotte’s death.”  
  
Dan wilted. “I never hated you, man. I know it wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know Pierce was going to do that.”  
  
“Stop defending me!” Lucifer shouted.  
  
Dan’s face scrunched up in confusion. “You’re angry at me for defending you?” He scoffed, and shot Chloe a ‘can you believe this guy’ look. “Man, that’s weird, even for you.”  
  
“Enough of this,” Lucifer growled, and marched towards Dan with his fists clenched and his eyes lit with frustration. Dan stumbled back, but his visible alarm did not slow Lucifer’s advance. Chloe leapt to her feet.  
  
“Lucifer! Don’t hurt him!” Chloe shouted in a rush. It was only after she'd spoken that she’d realised her mistake.  
  
Lucifer hadn’t been heading towards Dan. He’d been storming off. Dan just had the unfortunate luck of being in the same direction as the exit.  
  
Lucifer’s step faltered at her voice. With a trembling breath, he looked over his shoulder to stare at Chloe, a betrayed expression on his face. All the anger that had been boiling away inside him had been washed away, leaving only sorrow.  
  
“It’s good to know what you really think of me,” he murmured. “Next time you tell me I’m not monstrous, at least pretend to believe it.”  
  
He left without another word. No amount of calling stopped him, and when she went to run after him, Dan stopped her. She squirmed out of his grip, but he caught her hand before she could get too far.  
  
“Chloe, stop, stop.”  
  
“No, Dan. I need to help him,” she protested.  
  
“I don’t really know what just happened, but I think the best thing you can do right now is to give him some space, Chlo,” he said. “He looks like he needs it.”

With heavy reluctance, Chloe conceded. She watched Lucifer disappear not into the elevator, as she had suspected, but into Ella’s empty lab. That gave her a bit of hope. He may have run away, but he hadn’t run far. Maybe that was his way of leaving the metaphorical door open for her, to open when both of them were ready to.  
  
With a sigh, she sat back down at her desk. After assuring Dan that everything was alright and that she’d leave Lucifer alone for now, he returned to his work with a promise to keep an eye on Lucifer, leaving Chloe alone for what felt like the first time in days. In the past, she would have relished the brief moment of peace, without any distractions to mislay her attention, but right now, she couldn’t stand it. She was so used to having Lucifer by her side ever since he'd returned from Hell that not having him there was a jarring and noticeable absence. Her heart ached.  
  
It took her a few minutes to recognise the feeling for what it was: longing. It wasn’t the kind built upon lust and desire, or even the envious kind. It was that kind of longing you felt when someone was gone, and was never coming back.  
  
But that certain someone _was_ coming back. It made no sense for her to feel like that. It was the kind of over dramatic reaction that Lucifer would be prone to, not her. And yet, there it was, an unwelcome and pestiferous guest. It didn’t matter how many rational arguments she made against it, the longing tore them all apart like a ferocious beast trying to escape its cage. Eventually, she gave up, and let herself wallow in the misplaced emotions.  
  
She wasn’t sure how much time passed before she pulled herself together, but once she did, she just felt drained. Tired in a way that sleep couldn’t fix. Chloe rubbed a hand down her face and sighed. A good chunk of her wanted to go home immediately and just stay there forever and forget about all of this. Of course, there was no way she could do that. There was work to do, and none of it would be done if she sat around moping over someone who wasn’t actually gone to begin with.  
  
With renewed determination, she turned on her computer. As it booted up, she got out her steno pad so she could write down all the phone numbers and addresses of anyone who could be a lead to solving the witch’s murder.  
  
Once the computer was done setting up, she got up the browser. She typed in ‘ _hollywood religious groups_ ’ and clicked search. It loaded and loaded, the circle spinning for so long that Chloe wondered if the Internet was out, but when she checked, the computer confirmed it was indeed connected. Eventually, after a whole minute, the page updated.

‘ _No results found_ ’.  
  
Chloe blinked. What? How could there be nothing? Her search was as vague as you could get; who knew how many religious groups were in Los Angeles, let alone Hollywood. Surely there’d be a photo or even just one news article. Anything.  
  
Frustrated, she retyped her entry, changing it to ‘ _la religious groups_ ’. When that also yielded nothing, she tried ‘ _los angeles religious groups_ ’.  
  
Nothing. ‘ _california religious groups_ ’. ‘ _hollywood wiccans_ ’. ‘ _witch groups california_ ’. ‘ _pagan groups california’._

Again and again, no matter what she wrote in—even things completely unrelated to the case—the computer told her the same thing.  
  
‘ _No results found_ ’.  
  
The white of the blank page burned into Chloe’s retina.  
  
“What the hell,” she muttered.  
  
Chloe gave up on the computer, and took out her phone instead. If the computer was broken in some way, then her phone should work just fine. She opened up the browser on there and typed in her last search.  
  
With a sinking feeling, Chloe watched the search once again turn up empty, and just like before, she found herself muttering curses under her breath. What was going on?  
  
“Slacking on the job, ey, Decker,” a voice teased.  
  
Chloe startled to attention, almost dropping her phone in the process. She only just managed to maintain her grip on it. Her cheeks went warm with embarrassment as she looked up to see her visitor, who to her relief was Ella. Ella seemed to share in Chloe's embarrassment, an apologetic wince on her face.  
  
“Whoops, sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” she said.  
  
“It’s fine,” Chloe assured. She paused, an idea popping up into her head. “Hey, could you look something up on your phone for me?”  
  
“Oh, uh, yeah, sure.” She took out her phone, all the while giving Chloe’s a lingering look. “Your's not working, huh?”  
  
Chloe thought about the question. It seems a reasonable explanation, didn’t it, that her phone and computer were broken. The evidence certainly pointed towards it, what with her phone taking corrupted photos and being unable to search. And yet, no matter how much she wanted to believe that was the case, she knew it wasn’t.  
  
She gave a shrug.  
  
“What do you want me to search for?” Ella asked.  
  
“Anything.”  
  
Ella hesitated. “You want me to look up...anything?”  
  
“Uh-huh.”  
  
“Er, alright. Umm.” Ella hovered her thumbs over the keyboard, and screwed her face up in thought. “Hmm. How about ‘cute kittens’?” She typed it in once Chloe gave the go-ahead. From the frown she gave the screen, Chloe already knew the result of her search before she even said it. “Huh. Nothing. That’s weird.”  
  
Chloe rubbed at her temples. “Is the Internet down or something?”  
  
“Nah, it says it’s working fine. Besides, we only did one test. Every good experiment has you do it over and over again, to make sure the data isn’t just a fluke,” Ella said, ever the optimist.  
  
Before Chloe could tell her that yes, she _had_ done it over and over again, Ella was already typing something in. She lit up with a grin.  
  
“Huzzah!” she cheered. She presented her screen to Chloe. “See, Decker. Just a fluke.”  
  
Chloe’s mouth fell open, and she blinked several times to clear her eyes, sure she was seeing things. But she wasn’t. For the first time today, it wasn’t a blank page that she saw.  
  
Dozens and dozens of search results filled up the screen, everything from literary texts to forum pages, with photos popping up throughout as Ella scrolled it down. The page had to load more as she reached the end of the page, there were so many.  
  
As Chloe’s eyes flitted over the similar names and summaries of each result and saw the same word in bold each time, she eventually realised what it was that Ella had looked up.  
  
‘ _Devil_ ’.  
  
Ella turned the phone back to face her, but kept scrolling. “Yeesh,” she said, making a face. “The Internet really doesn’t like the Devil. It’s like reading a really, _really_ mean comment section.”  
  
While Ella was preoccupied, Chloe reopened the browser on her own phone. Hesitantly, she typed in ‘ _Lucifer_ ’.  
  
Results popped up one after the other. None of them were about the actual Lucifer or his activities in L.A., instead focusing on him as the mythological and malevolent figure. She opened a few pages, just to see if they worked, and when they did, she gave a quick skim through the paragraphs of texts spent talking about Lucifer and his apparent deeds. Not a single one of the pages was positive, or even neutral, in how they spoke of him. The word ‘monster’ and ‘evil’ popped up more than once. The photos that accompanied the text showed the likes of frothing serpents and red-skinned, demonic creatures.  
  
The same thing happened when she looked up ‘ _Satan_ ’.  
  
It was as if every bad thing ever said about Lucifer had been compiled together for her viewing pleasure.  
  
Chloe set her phone aside and let out a shaky breath.  
  
Was the world trying to tell her something? Was...God trying to tell her something? Or was this something else? Something worse?  
  
“Anyways,” Ella said, breaking Chloe out of her thoughts, “I actually came over here to tell you Lucifer’s waiting for you by the elevator.”  
  
Chloe quirked her head, surprised by the news. “Oh. Did you talk to him on your way in?”  
  
Ella’s brows drew together. “Chlo, I’ve been here for hours.”  
  
“What?” She tapped her phone, and focused on the numbers on the clock display. Sure enough, it was almost three hours later than it was when she last checked.  
  
“Yeah, I was in my lab with Lucifer,” Ella explained. “I was a bit surprised you didn’t come in, but I guess you didn’t realise we were even in there. You must have been crazy focused on your work.”  
  
Chloe scratched her wrists anxiously, but didn’t dispute Ella’s words. The truth was far too mortifying. Had she really been lost in her emotions for that long? It had only felt like a few minutes at most.  
  
Her horror became twofold when she realised she’d left Lucifer alone for all that time. She’d only intended to give him an hour at most before she sought him out and tried her best to comfort him. But it'd been almost three hours. So much could happen in that amount of time.  
  
“Did he say anything to you?” she asked.  
  
“Mmm, not much,” Ella said, shrugging. “Usually, when he comes in to listen to me talk, he makes comments here and there, but I think his mind must’ve been elsewhere today because he was definitely more quiet than usual. But he did talk to me a bit after a while. Mostly about random stuff, really. Then he helped me with some of my experiments, which was kinda cool of him to do. Humble brag here, but I gotta say, he’s becoming quite the forensics aficionado, thanks to me.”

She smiled like a proud parent, and straightened to her full height, pretending to adjust an imaginary bowtie. She kept talking, but Chloe didn’t hear a word, her attention now resting solely on Ella’s shirt. It had changed since the morning. Not replaced with another shirt, but actually _changed_ in appearance. At first glance, it appeared exactly the same, with the same words assuring ‘Everything is Fine’ and the same snake with its prey. But Chloe had always been a fan of Spot the Difference as a kid—a fact Lucifer had loved to tease her about—and could see that some things weren’t exactly the same as they were before.  
  
The nervous rodent was all but gone, only its neck left visible, and the words that were scrawled above the scene were now underlined and in bold. The snake’s pupils, which had been completely black, currently had a red tinge.

Chloe sprung from her feet, interrupting Ella mid-sentence.  
  
“I have to go,” she told Ella, hurriedly packing up her things as she did. “Lucifer’s waiting for me.”  
  
“Oh, right, of course. My bad,” Ella said sheepishly.  
  
Chloe gave her a curt goodbye and rushed towards the elevator.  
  
Just as Ella had said, Lucifer was waiting there, stood beside the elevator with his back resting against the wall as he stared towards Dan’s desk. He didn’t look angry, or even upset; if anything, he seemed tired, pratically radiating exhaustion. He also seemed maybe a touch bit anxious, his fingers tapping against the fabric of his pants impatiently. When he noticed her approach, he pushed himself off the wall and crossed his arms.  
  
“Can we go now?” he asked in a clipped tone.  
  
So he was still a bit angry, it seemed. Despite herself, Chloe found herself somewhat frustrated with his behaviour. “Lucifer, you didn’t have to wait for me if you didn’t want to. You could have left at any time,” she said, secretly glad he hadn’t.  
  
Lucifer shook his head. “I can’t go anywhere without you.”

In any other situation, she would’ve taken his words as his weird way of being romantic, but right now, with the miserable edge to his tone and the crummy day she’d been having, it seemed anything but.  
  
“You have the car,” he added lamely a moment later.  
  
 _And you have wings_ , Chloe almost retorted, but stopped herself. She didn’t want to argue right now. All she wanted right now was to go home and clear her head.  
  
She swallowed and nodded. “We can go.”  
  
Lucifer practically raced towards the elevator door, slamming his palm on the button with much the same desperate haste. 

Lucifer glanced back to Dan’s desk, so fleeting that Chloe would have missed it, if not for the wince that passed over Lucifer’s face. As if he was physically pained. Against her better judgement, Chloe looked over to where Dan was sitting.  
  
She almost lost her footing at the sight.

There, sitting upon Dan's desk and dressed in the same clothes she'd died in, was Charlotte. She was trailing her fingers across the back of Dan's hand, a mournful look on her face as she watched him work. He didn’t once look her way or react to her touch, completely unaware of her presence.  
  
Unaware of how close and yet so far away the love of his life was.  
  
Charlotte placed a hand on his cheek, and tried to meet Dan’s eye as she spoke words Chloe couldn’t hear, and Dan couldn’t either. He turned away. Charlotte let her hand fall back into her lap as she tried to keep her emotions in check, her face trembling with the effort.  
  
Chloe hopelessly watched it unfold. It wasn’t fair. None of it. Why did she deserve to see Charlotte when Daniel couldn’t?  
  
The elevator door dinged open.  
  
“Detective,” Lucifer said, pulling her forward. “Let’s go. Please.”

Chloe dug in her heels. “She was our friend. Shouldn’t we talk to her?”

“I don't want to.”

“Lucifer, this might be your last—”

“Chance to talk to her?” he finished. “I assure you, I’ll never have such an opportunity. Charlotte is in Heaven. That,” he said, jabbing his finger towards the ghost, “is not her.”  
  
The elevator door began to close, but Chloe rose her hand and stopped it. Lucifer backed away deeper into the elevator and out of her reach. The intention was clear: the only way he was coming out was on his own volition. Chloe wasn’t sure what she was even trying to do, but it felt like she should say something, try and persuade him to change his mind.

“Lucifer,” she pleaded. “You don’t know that. She could be here to say goodbye, to get some closure, and she can’t do that if you don’t let her.”

“Detective, I’ve already made my stance very clear. I don’t want to talk to her.”  
  
“Please, Lu—”

“No! I want to go home!” Lucifer yelled, only to flinch at his words. His gaze drifted away, and in a quieter voice, he said once again, "I want to go home.”

The tremble in his voice was enough to break Choe’s resolve. She sighed, and stepped into the elevator. It felt too much like a failure, but it was clear Lucifer wanted to leave, and nothing would dissuade him from that. Not even her.  
  
“Okay,” she said softly. “You want me to drop you off at Lux?”

He shook his head. "Not there."

Chloe didn’t ask if he meant her house. She didn’t want to hear him say no.


	5. You Can't Say Goodbye

Lucifer spent the drive home staring at the storm-black sky, silent in a way he rarely was. Chloe’s attempts at conversation were met with monosyllabic sentences. Even when Trixie leapt into the backseat after being picked up and started to ramble idly, Lucifer barely said a word.  
  
There must have been a fire burning somewhere in the mountains, because the air stunk heavily of smoke. While Chloe cringed at the smell, Lucifer didn’t seem to notice it at all, not once speaking up to complain about it.  
  
The moment they got through the door, he excused himself with polite haste, and escaped upstairs to shut himself in the room that had slowly become his. Chloe tried to maintain her usual routine, to keep herself preoccupied through the afternoon, but her gaze kept landing back on his staircase. After the day she’d had, all she wanted was someone to talk to about it, someone who would listen and understand.  
  
Which was very hard to do when that someone was determined to avoid her.  
  
“Is Lucifer okay?” Trixie asked as she unpacked her homework. Being the progeny of two detectives had made her very perceptive about even the smallest of disturbances; not that anything that Chloe or Lucifer were doing right now was all that subtle. Regardless, Chloe had hoped Trixie wouldn’t notice. She had no idea how to explain what was going on.  
  
“He’s just had a bad day,” Chloe said, hoping the understatement would be enough to sate Trixie’s rabid curiosity.  
  
A foolish hope, really. “What happened?” Trixie asked.  
  
Chloe sat down beside her, and trailed her fingers through Trixie’s hair. “There were some things that happened today that brought up some memories he’d rather forget. I tried to help, but I said a few things that hurt him. That’s why he’s been so quiet, monkey. He needs some space for now, but he should be okay soon.”  
  
Trixie glanced at the door, her face pinched with childlike concern. “I hope he does. Being alone is awful.”  
  
Chloe hugged Trixie to her chest. “He’s not alone, monkey. He’s got us. I promise, everything will be okay.” In a brighter tone, she said, “So, did you learn anything new at school today?”  
  
“Not really. None of the teachers were there.”  
  
Chloe withdrew from the hug with a frown. “None of them? Why didn’t I get any notifications about that? There was no way they could have kept the school running without teaching. You should have texted me.”  
  
Trixie shrugged her shoulders. “My phone wasn’t working.”  
  
Her’s too? “Then what did you do all day?” Chloe asked.  
  
“Nothing, really," she said. "Can I have the day off tomorrow? I don’t think anyone’s going to be there then either.”  
  
“Why do you think that, monkey?”  
  
“Just a feeling,” Trixie said. She seemed to have gotten bored of the conversation, as she turned her attention to her homework.  
  
Chloe retreated to the kitchen. She leaned onto the bench and held her head in her hands.  
  
Everything would be okay, she reminded herself. If she could make Trixie believe that, then she could believe it to.  
  
She started on dinner, and let her mind focus on the act of cooking. The rest of the night was spent seeking out every new distraction. Talking to Trixie; watching the TV (they ended up watching an episode of ‘ _Bones_ ’, since all the movies on Netflix seemed either to be from the last century, an action movie or, worst of all, X-rated); playing a game of Scrabble; planning out Trixie’s Halloween costume. It all helped her keep afloat until it was time for bed.

She did her usual nightly routine, brushing her teeth and dressing into her pyjamas. Trixie gave her usual meagre pleas to stay up longer, but lost the battle when she kept yawning. Chloe shooed her off to bed with a smile, and told her she could read in bed until they said their goodnights.  
  
Chloe plunked herself on the couch and got out her phone, prepared to read some articles and check up on the news, as she often did just before bed, only to be reminded of events of day’s events when everything on the search engine came up blank. She sighed, exasperated.  
  
With nothing else in mind, she opened up her phone's photo gallery. Just as it was before, all the photos were almost entirely blank, save for the instances where Lucifer showed up. She scrolled up without opening any of them to full-size. Black square after black square cascaded down, rare dots of red and white popping up. Even a photo she’d recognised to be a selfie of them both that she’d taken only two days ago showed only him, while her spot in the photo was left vacant. On and on, it went, with no change in pattern.  
  
When she reached the end of the gallery, she realised something.  
  
Lucifer was wearing the same suit in every photo. Which was impossible. She distinctly remembered him wearing a colourful array of attire over the last few days, none of which had been the one that was peppered throughout the gallery.  
  
Chloe clicked the phone closed and threw it aside. She didn’t want to think about what it all meant right now. It was too much, and she was so tired. Tomorrow. She’d deal with this tomorrow.  
  
She got up and tiptoed into Trixie’s room. Trixie had given up on trying to stay awake, her face nuzzled into her pillow. Chloe pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Good night, monkey.”  
  
Trixie murmured her own ‘good nights’ drowsily in return, but was out like a light before Chloe had even left the room.

Chloe made her way to her own bedroom, but just before she reached her door, she stopped outside of Lucifer’s. Given the late hours he had used to keep at Lux, it was pretty likely that he was still awake. She ended up hovering outside his room for quite some time, her hand closed in a fist that did not waver from her side. All it would take is one knock and just a pinch of convincing, and he’d let her in.  
  
But she had no idea what she’d even say to him without making it worse. Every pithy and reassuring statement seemed to turn to ash in her mouth. So, she stayed there by the door, frozen with indecision.  
  
Eventually, the promise of sleep was a siren too tempting to ignore, and she dragged her feet to her bedroom. After bundling herself up in her comforter and sinking into the warmth of the mattress, it only took her a few minutes to drift off into sleep.  
  
In the state of unconsciousness, there was no way for her to determine how long the peace lasted, but it seemed only a fleeting reprieve before _—_ just as it had done every night heretofore _—_ the darkness of sleep soon unfurled to present the Penthouse.  
  
For the first time, however, it wasn’t the colour of silver. The room was the same deep blacks and natural tones that she remembered it to be in reality. In the dim light of the tree-chandelier’s light, she realised there was no one else in the room. Her mum and dad were gone, and in their absence, the room was quiet.  
  
She rose from the couch, a sour feeling in her chest. With desperate fervour, she searched the room, a strange need to confirm they were gone. She turned up nothing, not even a speck of evidence proving they’d been there.  
  
She was well and truly alone.  
  
Why did that feel worse?  
  
Agitated, she marched over to the bar and poured herself a drink. She downed it in one draught. It tasted like nothing, and did as much to soothe her nerves, but like a fool repeating the same mistake over and over again in the hopes that outcome would change, she poured herself two more glasses, and drowned them both. As expected, it did little to help her.  
  
She poured another, but did not drink it, swirling the liquid around the glass.  
  
 _This may be the last proper drink I have in a long time_ , she realised. She gave it one last swirl before she tipped the contents into her mouth. This time, though, she let herself savour the feeling of it in his mouth. It almost tasted like something, a brief hint of whiskey in its flavour, before it faded once more to nothing. She let it sink down her throat.  
  
No amount of drinking would stop the inevitable, or change what she knew to be true.  
  
She had to leave.  
  
The thought dug into her like poisonous barbs, leaving behind the horrible sting of sorrow. Oh, how she wished to ignore it, and just bury herself in with the selfish thoughts that promised her contentment if she stayed. Days filled with joy and love. But, while the fantasy was pleasant, it did not sway her. She _had_ to leave.  
  
Like a beast scorned, the selfish thoughts changed tactics and threatened her mercilessly with the loneliness that was to come. Images of nothingness, of quiet, of darkness, flooded her mind. _This is what you’ll get, if you leave,_ her selfish thoughts told her. _Do you really want that?_  
  
That was enough to send her collapsing onto her couch with a sob. Of course she didn’t want that. It had been fine before, when she hadn’t known better. She had tolerated it, if bitterly. But now...She didn’t want to be alone again.  
  
In that moment, she almost gave into the selfishness that had once defined her. The desire to stay was so strong, so overwhelming, that it took all of her will to reject it. She didn’t want to go, but she _needed_ to. No amount of fantasy or temptation would absolve the fact that if she stayed, everyone she loved could suffer. She could not stand by and let that happen.  
  
Quashing the selfish thoughts that lingered, she set the empty glass aside and strode to the balcony. Even with all her determination, she still hesitated. 

Footsteps sounded from behind her, soft and slow. She did not turn around.  
  
“You’re leaving me.”  
  
“I have to,” she whispered, her gaze fixated on the horizon.  
  
“Only because of one silly mistake. You could have avoided all of this if you’d just kept your mouth shut. Why do you always mess up every good thing in your life?” The person stepped closer. “We were happy. _I_ was happy.”  
  
“I didn’t mean to hurt you.” She clenched her hands on the railing, and tried her best to keep her breathing even.  
  
“But you did, in the end, didn’t you? I loved you, and you abandoned me. Left me to pick up the pieces on my own. How could you do that to me?”  
  
She shuddered with despair. “I had to protect you. Protect everyone. That's why I must leave now as well.”  
  
“No, no, please don’t leave me again.”  
  
The desperation in the words sent arrows flying into her heart, and her mouth shook with fine tremors as she tried to hold back her tears. Despite every part of her telling her to go now before she lost her resolve, she turned and faced her first and only love.  
  
“Chloe,” she whispered, the name a trembling song on her lips.  
  
She stepped forward, and placed her hand on the Detective’s cheek, using her thumb to wipe away the tear that had trailed down the skin.  
  
“I wished we had more time,” she said. “I wished I could have loved you the way you deserved.”  
  
“But you said goodbye anyway,” the Detective said, but there was no longer any anger in her voice. All there was was a profound and unshakable sadness.  
  
“I never wanted to.” She leaned forward and the two of them shared a desperate, salt-tinged kiss. It took all she had to pull away. “I’m sorry.”  
  
She stepped back, towards the ledge. With a roll of her shoulders, she unfurled her wings. Chloe gazed at them, the white light of the feathers shining in the tears that slipped down her face.  
  
“Please,” Chloe begged, “please, don’t go. Not again.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” she said again, knowing it’d never be enough. No amount of words would ever fix this.  
  
The last thing she saw before she fell into Hell was Chloe’s eyes filled with grief. Even before she broke into the depths of the infernal realm, she knew the image would haunt her for the rest of her days.  
  
Leaving Chloe behind was and would always be Lucifer’s greatest regret of all.  
  


***  
  


Chloe woke up in a sweat. The last vestiges of the dream sent adrenaline streaming through her system, forcing her out of the bed and to her feet. She paced from wall to wall like a caged tiger, her breath rushing in and out of her in forceful waves. Wrapping her arms around herself, she scratched at her shoulder blades, the skin there itching at the absence of wings that had never been hers to begin with.  
  
What the Hell.  
  
What. The. _Hell._

She could barely put a coherent thought together beside those three words. And what a poor choice of words they were, considering the nature of the dream she’d just been subjected to. None of it made any sense. Her skin felt too tight on her body, and the room around her seemed to be closed in. She couldn’t stop pacing, frantic energy working through her body.  
  
At least it was _her_ body. She wasn’t in the Penthouse. She wasn’t Lucifer.  
  
She wasn’t being left behind again.  
  
Then why did it hurt so much? Why did it feel so—

No, this was ridiculous, she told herself, shaking the errant thought away. Absolutely ridiculous! She was panicking over a dream. A _dream,_ for crying out loud. All these emotions she was feeling were over some fantasy her fretful mind had conjured. None of it was real.

Lucifer had left, yes, but he’d come back, and he was never going away ever again. It was only a nightmare. A weird, horrible nightmare, no doubt, but nothing more than that.

Chloe slowed her breathing, and sat on the edge of her bed, exhausted now the adrenaline in her veins had faded away. After a minute, her heartbeat no longer drummed in her ears, and the weight on her chest had faded away.  
  
She wiped a hand down her face and chuckled tiredly. What a way to start the day.  
  
It was still dark outside, but to her relief, the hour wasn’t too early that she had to go back to sleep, with her phone reading 6:06 AM. While the stress of her nightmare had mostly faded, it still lingered in her mind, so to soothe her mind, she beelined to her bathroom to take a shower.  
  
The heat of the water on her skin was just the balm she needed, and she spent several minutes just letting the water wash over her. Refreshed, she got dressed and did her make-up. By the time she was finished with her morning rituals, half an hour had passed. She knew Trixie would soon be up to get ready for school, so she made her way to go downstairs. She only made it halfway down the hall when she stopped.  
  
Lucifer’s door was ajar. Tentatively, she peered into his room, only to find it empty. The vacancy left her torn between worry that he’d run off, and relief that he’d left his room. Maybe he was ready to talk to her.  
  
Chloe ventured towards the staircase, but paused before she even took a step.  
  
There were voices downstairs.  
  
It didn’t sound like furniture was being overturned or drawers being ripped open, so it was unlikely that it was robbers, but you could never be sure. Carefully, she descended down the staircase until she reached the point where she could finally pinpoint who was talking. She couldn’t make out what was being said, the sound muffled by the walls, but she’d recognise the mellifluous tones of Lucifer anywhere. Chloe ventured further down to where the staircase turned into the living room, and peered around the corner, trying her best to be as silent as possible, so not to disturb the conversation.  
  
Lucifer stood in the kitchen with his back to her, resting ever so slightly against the edge of the bench. Whoever he was talking to seemed to be in the dining area, just outside of Chloe’s field of vision. 

“—are they?” she heard Lucifer say, only catching the tail end of whatever question he was asking. “How is...everything?”

It seemed like the usual kind of ice breaker. He mustn’t have been talking to the person for very long, so really, if Chloe was to make her presence known now, he wouldn’t exactly have any cause to call her out for eavesdropping. And yet, she found herself frozen on the step, unwilling to interrupt. After how he’d been around her last night, it was nice to hear his voice, and she had a feeling that once he realised she was there, he’d shut down again. So she kept her breathing quiet, and listened.  
  
“They’re fine,” said the unseen visitor. They had a youthful, soft-spoken voice. “Everything’s fine. Same as always.”  
  
Lucifer rubbed his forehead irritably. “Bloody hell, could you be any more vague? I’m going to need more details than that. I’d even listen to you describe the colour of the sky, for crying out loud. Just give me something, _anything_.”  
  
The visitor sighed. “Lu, this has got to stop. I can’t keep checking up on them every other day. I have a job to do.”  
  
“As you’ve told me a thousand times before.”  
  
“No, I really mean it this time. Not all of us can slack off—”  
  
“I am _not_ slacking off,” Lucifer hissed, raising to his full height. “I am doing what needs to be done.”  
  
“I don’t see how you can do that if you’re here playing house,” the visitor argued quietly. “How long were you planning on staying here anyway? Because if you’re gone too long from your post...you do realise what could happen, right?”  
  
Lucifer deflated. “It’s just for...a few more days.”  
  
“I don’t think it’s even going to last that long, Lu. Can’t you see it’s all coming apart? This world is going to end, whether you like or not. Even you’re not powerful enough to maintain so many tu—”  
  
“It’s _fine_ ,” Lucifer protested. After a short pause, he grimaced. “Okay, perhaps there are a few kinks here and there. But nothing I can’t fix,” he rushed to add.  
  
The visitor stepped forward, the ends of a robe billowing into view for disappearing from sight once more. There was a hint of desperation in their tone as they spoke. “Lu, if you’re still here when it all goes to Hell, you could be lost forever. Not even I would be able to get you out. You'd be trapped.”  
  
“I suppose it’s what I deserve, isn’t it,” Lucifer said, a manic edge to his voice that made Chloe shift uncomfortably in her hiding place. “After all, I’ve allowed thousands and thousands of innocents to be stuck in Hell for millennia. I never so much raised a finger to ease their torment, even when I knew it was wrong. It seems only fair I suffer the same fate as them. Trapped in a prison of my own making.”  
  
“Oh em dee, Lu, do you realise how stupid you’re being? I get it, you’re hurting, but you realise if you got trapped, everything you’ve done would have been pointless. It’d be chaos. You can’t actually be serious about going through with that.”  
  
“Oh, but I am,” Lucifer assured with a snarl. “After all, every good captain should go down with their ship.”  
  
For a minute, there was only Lucifer’s harsh breathing as he stared vehemently towards the dining area. Chloe fought her every instinct to rush to his side and soothe him, instead waiting for the visitor to speak up. Eventually, footsteps broke the quiet, and the visitor stepped into view.  
  
She was a young-looking woman, with her short black hair cut into a bob. She wore a red cloak that went down to her knees, which was clasp together around her neck by a chain attached between two fish brooches. Despite having no memory of seeing her before, Chloe found her familiar.  
  
“I’ve met enough dead people in my lifetime,” said the woman, “to know what’s messing you up.”  
  
“And what’s that, pray tell?” Lucifer said haughtily.  
  
“You can’t say goodbye.”  
  
Lucifer froze, his show of arrogance shattering to pieces. He didn’t even so much as breathe as the woman approached. She put her hands over his, and rubbed a soothing gesture across his knuckles. Lucifer tensed, but did not withdraw from the touch.  
  
“You have to let her go, Lu. Before it ruins you.”  
  
Lucifer let out a shaky breath as his shoulders trembled. “I can’t,” he whispered.  
  
“You have to.”  
  
“I _can’t,_ ” Lucifer repeated forcefully. “I’m nothing without her.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. You’re not nothing. You’re someone who’s loved. Someone who is needed. Someone I don’t want to lose.”  
  
“You lost me a long time ago,” he snapped. “When you abandoned me like everyone else. The only reason you’re even here is because you want me to forgive you. Well, guess what: I don’t.”  
  
The woman flinched, visibly hurt by his words. She hugged her arms around her chest and huffed. “If you don’t want me here,” she said, “then fine. Have it your way, Lucifer. You won’t have to see me ever again. Have fun in your little apocalypse.” She rushed to the door.  
  
Lucifer’s eyes lit up with panic, and he chased after her. He latched onto the woman’s sleeve, stopping her before she could exit. “Wait, Azrael, please don’t go,” he entreated. He dragged her away from the door, something almost desperate in his movements. “You can help me fix it, help me get rid of all the manifestations that shouldn’t be here. Then it can be perfect again and it won’t fall apart.”  
  
The woman—Azrael, a name that made Chloe shiver with recognition—shook her head apologetically, tears in her eyes. “Even if I could fix it, I won’t help you destroy yourself, Lu, not even to make you happy.” She pulled herself free of Lucifer’s grip and strode towards the door. It opened with a groan. “I don’t want this to be the last time I see you. Please make the right decision before it’s too late. If not for me, then for her.”  
  
Azrael rolled her shoulders, and two dark grey wings unfurled from her back. She stepped outside the door, and with a single flap, disappeared out of sight. The moment she was gone, Lucifer collapsed against the kitchen bench, his head falling into his hands.  
  
Chloe stayed on the staircase, unable to move. It was like every part of her body had been chained down by ten tonne weights. She supposed that was a normal reaction. Afterall, overhearing the Angel of Death and the Devil discussing the inevitable end of the world wasn’t exactly something you just brushed off.  
  
A faint rattling sound filled the room. It was quiet at first, barely perceivable, but it quickly got louder and louder until it was almost frantic. Chloe flitted her eyes around the room nervously, and soon found the source of the noise. It was the doors. Every single one of them was shaking on their hinges, as if someone unseen was knocking against them desperately, begging to be let in.  
  
Then, all at once, the doors in the house swung open. The very foundations of the house shook as a fierce wind blew through the house like a ravaging army, carrying with it a chorus of howling voices.  
  
Chloe fell back onto the step, startled. She’d barely recovered from the shock when all the doors slammed shut a second later. The cacophony cut out without ceremony, the silence so sudden in its return that Chloe flinched.  
  
Through it all, Lucifer did not move once, did not even speak. His only reaction to the chaos was to chuckle bitterly, as if horribly amused by the display.

As soundlessly as possible, Chloe scrambled back up the stairs, before Lucifer could rise and catch her spying.  
  



	6. Like Shadows Painted In

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In my head, this chapter is titled 'Yet Another Deep Conversation In a Car'.

The morning was nothing like the one before, and yet unfortunately all too alike. After Chloe found the courage to return downstairs, she found Lucifer cooking breakfast. Bacon and eggs, with a side of buttered toast. There were only two plates out, and neither were set for him.  
  
He greeted her. She did the same.  
  
He smiled. She returned one of her own.  
  
He asked her how she slept. She said ‘well’ and asked him the same.  
  
It was dull, it was common, and for anyone listening in, it would’ve seemed nothing more than small talk between acquaintances. But Chloe could feel it, hidden within the breath between words. Underneath it all, like a Leviathan lurking in the dark depths of the ocean, there was an uneasiness. A deep, inescapable uneasiness.  
  
Lucifer, for the most part, seemed intent on ignoring that it was there at all. He acted like the events of the day before had never happened, his manner gleeful and animated to an excessive degree, even for him. It only increased twofold when Trixie arrived, the two of them spending the morning chatting about childish, unimportant things. All the while Chloe listened, quiet, still, observant.  
  
The world was falling apart, and Lucifer was acting like the grass couldn’t be any greener.  
  
Chloe didn’t know what to do. Perhaps he could pretend, but her? There was only so much acting she could. How was she supposed to keep smiling and tricking herself into believing everything was normal knowing now what she did.  
  
_This world is going to end,_ Azrael had said, _whether you like or not._

 _Have fun in your little apocalypse._  
  
Thousands of questions flooded through Chloe’s head. How long had Lucifer known this was going to happen? Had he just been dragging her along this whole time knowing it’d end like this? Is that why all the manifestations were appearing now? How much time did they have left? Was everyone going to die? What the hell was going to happen?

Was this all because of the prophecy that never came to fruition?  
  
She knew if she was to demand answers, Lucifer would tell her nothing but the truth, or at least half of it. Chloe played scenario after scenario in her head, wondering what he’d say, what he’d do to pretend that it wasn’t all bad at it seemed.  
  
_Oh dear. My apologies, Detective,_ the imaginary Lucifer in her head told her cheerily. _I can’t believe I forgot to inform you of the forthcoming destruction of reality. How silly of me! It's going to a literal Hell on Earth, I'm afraid. But, you needn’t worry, for I’ll be there by your side the whole time, hand in hand. It’s rather romantic, don’t you think?_ _  
_ _  
_ With each scenario, his words got grimmer, darker, until the voice in her head barely resembled the man she knew.  
  
_Poor little Detective,_ the monster cooed, _you really thought we’d get a chance at a happy ending? You should have known it was always going to end in misery and flames. After all, I’m the Devil, the Beast of Revelation. Just be glad I’m kind enough to hold your hand while I watch you burn._ _  
_ _  
_ She knew the words were nothing more than her fears concentrated, that Lucifer would never say such things to her, but she couldn’t help but glance at him every so often and remember his laughter after Azrael left, and wonder what dark thoughts hid under his lively façade.  
  
The thoughts consumed her, and the world moved around her in a dream-like blur. She hardly realised she was outside the house until a hand waved in front of her, pulling her out her stupor. She blinked, and her surroundings settled into focus.  
  
Lucifer stood before her, his head tilted in confusion. He’d asked her a question. She replayed his muffled words in her head, but only got the tone and not the words that made it up.   
  
“Sorry, what did you say?” Chloe said.  
  
“I said would you like me to drive today?” Lucifer said. “You seem a tad bit distracted.”  
  
“Uh, sure,” Chloe said. She dug into her pocket and threw him her keys.

He caught them deftly and rounded the car to take the driver’s seat while Chloe took shotgun. She sat herself down onto the seat, and on habit, pulled the seatbelt over to the buckle, taking a few tries to do so before she slotted it in successfully. Then, like a puppet whose strings had been cut, she fell against the car door. Her breath brushed against the glass, but it didn’t condense.  
  
“Are you alright?” Lucifer asked as he started the car. The vibrations rattled against Chloe’s head.  
  
She laughed. She didn’t mean to, but it was the first reaction that bubbled to the surface. Even to her ears, it sounded a little bit deranged. Lucifer reached towards her, but did not touch her, his hand hovering halfway between them.  
  
“Detective?” he said, concern clear in his tone.  
  
“Just a bit tired,” she murmured.  
  
“Bad dreams again?”  
  
“Oh, you have no idea.”  
  
Lucifer didn’t seem pleased with her response, but he didn’t poke the topic any further. Lucifer pulled out onto the road, and they made their way to the precinct.  
  
The freeway was completely empty. Not one car drove by, and when Chloe looked in the wing mirror, there wasn’t the gleam of a distant car to be seen. Not that she could see all that far. The fog that had been hovering just past the closest buildings now lapped at the edge of the freeways—only the tell-tale silhouettes of the surrounding buildings there to assure her that the rest of the world still existed—as well as behind them, trailing after them like some great, sluggish beast.  
  
It made her feel very claustrophobic, and so, so lonely.  
  
In the hopes of easing her nerves, she switched on the radio, not even bothering to twist the dial to change the station. “— _you hold me closer than, I can ever remember being held_ ,” it played, the singing strangely distorted but nonetheless bearable. It was a slow song, calming. Chloe rested her head against the seat and closed her eyes, listening to it play. “ _And I'm not afraid to sleep now, If we can stay like this until...It's the last day on earth_.”  
  
Chloe’s eyes shot open.  
  
“ _In my dreams, in my dreams_ ,” the radio went on. “ _It's the end of the world, And you've—_ ”  
  
Chloe quickly switched it off. Lucifer, thankfully, didn’t ask why.  
  
As soon as had, though, she wished to turn it back on. The silence was unbearable, and provided too much space for the darkest of Chloe’s thoughts. She needed to talk, even if the only person she had to talk to was Lucifer, who seemed to be striving for an Academy Award for Best Show of Denial. If she was to mention she’d overheard, he’d likely deflect and change the topic. She’d have to be subtle about this if she wanted to get at least some information out of him.  
  
Chloe considered what to say, chewing her lip. His talk with Azrael had been, for the most part, incredibly vague, and apart from the mentions of apocalypse and the world falling apart, she hadn’t managed to divine all that much from the conversation. But, if there was one thing that was apparent other than the obvious, it was Azrael's repeated pleas to Lucifer to leave. The way she’d said it, she had made it sound like that Lucifer’s absence would solve all the problems.  
  
As much as Chloe wanted to avoid the end times, the thought of Lucifer leaving for good made her stomach roll with anxiety. She didn’t want to lose him, even to save the world. There had to be another way.  
  
Chloe replayed the conversation over in her head, and it was near the end of it that she snared herself a potential lead. _Help me get rid of all the manifestations that shouldn’t be here_ , Lucifer had said, _then it can be perfect again and it won’t fall apart._  
  
A spark of hope came to life in Chloe’s chest. By the sounds of it, the manifestations were the reason for the problems, the reasons for everything falling apart. So all they had to do was get rid of them. Lucifer wouldn’t have to leave, and the world would be saved. Everything would go back to normal. Chloe straightened with a new sense of purpose.  
  
“I think we need to talk more about the manifestations,” she said, keeping her tone professional and even. “I need the full picture before we go any further with our investigation.”  
  
Lucifer rolled his eyes. “Surely there are other things you’d rather talk about. Say, the time I accidentally became mayor of Perth for a week. Or, if that doesn’t pique your fancy, perhaps you'd like to hear about my lovely dalliance with Oscar Wilde way back when. Now that’s a raunchy story. You see, I met him—  
  
“Lucifer,” Chloe interrupted with a flat look.  
  
Lucifer sighed. “Very well. Ask away.”  
  
“Why are they here? Are the ghosts, um, a sign of the end times?” she asked hesitantly.  
  
Lucifer scoffed, but Chloe didn’t miss the flash of anxiety in his eyes. “‘End times’? Well, I certainly wouldn’t go that far. You’d know that was happening by the awful racket up in Heaven, thanks to Raphael and Co.’s bloody awful trumpet playing. But, believe me Detective, you won’t be around to see that dreaded concert. The Earth’s not going to end anytime soon, I promise you. ”  
  
Chloe stared at him, scrutinising him. He didn’t appear to be lying. Not that she would know his tells if he was, considering he had never hactually spoken a direct lie to her, but she had a feeling that he would be the kind of person who couldn’t lie to save their life. He could charm his way out of situations, sure, and used implication and omissions to lead people to believe what they must, but when she pictured him trying to outright lie, all she saw was him bumbling for words and fidgeting nervously, thousands of years out of practice.  
  
Yet, even though she knew he wasn’t lying, she also knew his words contradicted his conversation with Azrael. He hadn’t seemed to be lying then either, but it was impossible for his words then and now both to be true.  
  
Until she could distinguish the truth from fiction, she needed to keep on assuming the worst scenario was the more likely. She liked to call it cautious pessimism. Better to prepare for the worst and have it not happen than to assume the best and have everything go to hell.

“If that’s not why,” she asked, “then what is? What is the reason?”

“I suppose before I answer any of those questions,” Lucifer said with clear unwillingness, “I should first clarify what they are. I’ve been calling them manifestations, but I suppose a better term for them would be 'tulpa'.”  
  
Chloe raised an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”  
  
“You haven’t heard of it? It was all the rage in Tibet back in the day. Well, essentially, the word tulpa refers to an entity formed through conscious—and in some cases, unconscious—thought that eventually gains its own sentience and autonomy, with its own ideas and feelings separate from the one who created it. ”  
  
Chloe blinked, the information shattering everything she thought she knew about the manifestations to pieces. All this time, she had thought of them as ghosts, regardless of Lucifer’s constant corrections, which she guessed now made sense in hindsight. At least ghosts made sense. This was bordering on flat out nonsense. She almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it all. “So they’re, what, imaginary friends with a brain? Seriously?”  
  
Lucifer made a face. “Well, I wouldn’t describe them that way, but if that helps clarify things for you, then I suppose you could think of them as such.”  
  
“But that doesn’t make sense. When I spoke to Saint-Saëns, he seemed real. Normal. Not the product of some person’s imagination.”  
  
“Memories,” Lucifer said quietly.  
  
“What?”  
  
“He was a product of a person’s memories,” Lucifer clarified. “That’s why he seemed real. He’s not some imaginary creation brought to life. He’s the collection of impressions and recollections compiled together to create a near-perfect imitation.”  
  
Chloe hummed thoughtfully. Somehow, hearing that helped her deal with it all a bit easier. Rampant memories ending the world was just a bit easier to digest than the idea of Hobbes the Tiger spearheading the apocalypse.   
  
“Then how exactly do we get rid of them?” she said. “How do you get rid of a memory?”  
  
“Well, if movies are to be believed, a great big knock on the head.”  
  
“Lucifer,” she said tiredly. “I need you to be serious right now. This is important.”  
  
Lucifer sighed. “The tulpas you saw are like shadows,” he said, “painted in with only the memories someone has of the person they represent. They may be the same shape of the person, and look and act like them in every way, but they’re still, for all intents and purposes, a shadow. There to fill an absence. No matter how much sentience they obtain, that is and will always be their purpose. The moment that absence no longer needs to be filled, they fade away.”  
  
“So...they die if the person who made them stops needing them?” Chloe said slowly. Even though she knew getting rid of them was likely the course of action that needed to be taken, she couldn’t help but feel horrified by the news. The manifestations might not be real in the literal sense, but they were still autonomous entities, with a conscience and free will. The thought of their life and death—their _entire_ existence—being completely dependent on the whims of another was terrible.  
  
“I suppose so, yes,” Lucifer said.  
  
Chloe went to ask more, but stopped herself. She took in Lucifer’s dejected posture, and his white-knuckled grip on the wheel. Her eyes widened. The way he had been talking about them, and the fact he’d known all of the manifestations that had appeared so far personally, was enough to make the final pieces of the puzzle click in Chloe’s head.  
  
“You’re the one manifesting them, aren’t you?”  
  
Lucifer let out a breath and sunk further into his seat. He glanced her way, smiling grimly. She hadn’t realised how dark the bags under his eyes were until now. “Yes,” he admitted.  
  
“Why?” Chloe blurted out before she could stop herself.  
  
He rolled his eyes. “It’s not like I’m doing it on bloody purpose, Detective,” he grumbled. “Believe me, if I could get rid of those pesky anachronisms, I would do so in a heartbeat. They’re ruining everything.”  
  
But how? That’s what Chloe didn’t understand now that she knew what was going on. How could the phantasms bring about the end of the world? After all, they were quite literally figments made up of Lucifer’s memories, and that hardly sounded like something that could bring destruction. Perhaps she’d misunderstood Azrael’s words. After all, she’d spent years leaping to conclusions about Lucifer and his past. It was possible that had happened here.  
  
But Lucifer _was_ an angel, she reminded herself. An angel with untold amounts of power, and whose parents had created the whole universe. And he had once mentioned to her his ancient ability to will things into existence before said power went latent after his fall. Clearly, it’d come back in some way if the manifestations were any proof of that.  
  
But maybe he no longer had control of it, Chloe mused, and that was why everything was coming apart. Perhaps, in trying to remove the tulpas by force, he was unintentionally tearing reality apart.  
  
It made an unfortunate amount of sense. Chloe sighed. Leave it to Lucifer to bring about the apocalypse accidentally. And because of his unhealthy coping mechanisms as well. Yeah, she should have seen that one coming.  
  
But at least she had a clear course of action now. If she was going to fix this, all she had to do was help Lucifer deal with whatever ‘absence’ he was unwillingly trying to fill in. Do that, and the crisis would be averted. Everything could go back to normal.  
  
So...how did Lucifer normally face his emotional dilemmas?  
  
“We should go see Linda,” Chloe said. “She could help you deal with this.”  
  
Lucifer chuckled. “Oh, she’d have a field day with this, I’m sure. But as it so happens, she’s not around at the moment.”  
  
“Is she having time off with Charlie?”  
  
Lucifer shrugged. “I suppose she would be doing that, yes.”  
  
“Couldn’t you call her for a quick chat, just to help you work all this out?”  
  
“Be my guest,” he said with a wry smile, digging out his phone to give to her.  
  
It had seen better days, that was for sure. The metal rim was rusted brown, and there were a few cracks across the screen. She couldn’t believe he hadn’t replaced it, considering his obsession with having an outward presentation of lavishness and refinement, but it seemed to be working fine, so she didn’t comment.  
  
Chloe typed in the passcode and got up his contacts. It was filled to the brim with names, and it took her several swipes to reach the bottom of the ‘A’s. She decided to look up Linda’s name in the contact rather than scroll for what probably would be minutes in trying to find her. Thankfully, there was only one Doctor Linda in Lucifer’s contacts. She clicked on her name, and the phone began to ring.  
  
A second later, it cut off with a grating beep, not even reaching voicemail. Chloe groaned.  
  
Right. The phones weren’t working. She tried once more, just in case, and was hardly surprised when it didn’t go through. She went to hand it back, but stopped herself as she noticed something in the top right corner.  
  
The battery was on zero percent. There was no notification informing her to plug in the phone, and apart from the occasional flicker and the time and date glitching, the phone showed no signs of shutting down.  
  
“How is your phone even working?” she said. “It’s not even charged.”  
  
“I can turn anything on,” Lucifer said. At Chloe’s eye roll, he added, “In the literal sense, Detective. Though,” he added with a sultry smile, “I certainly can do it in the sexual sense as well.”  
  
Chloe cleared her throat uncomfortably. “Well, I guess I can see how that comes in handy. The literal turning on,” she clarified exasperatedly when Lucifer waggled his eyebrows.  
  
She turned back to the phone in her hand. Experimentally, Chloe clicked on Lucifer’s photo gallery, to see if he had the same corruption issue as her. She had seen him take at least a few photos over the last few days, so if his was okay, then it was just her phone that was being janky in the camera department.  
  
It seemed, however, whatever photos he had taken had been deleted, with the last photo taken months ago according to the most recent image’s timestamp. But unlike the photos in her phone, the ones in Lucifer’s phone were awash with colour and life. There were photos of L.A, photos of crime scenes (which he really shouldn’t have, and she would have to make an effort to delete those at a later time), photos of all his closest friends and family, but most of all, photos of her. She was his favourite subject, with many photos taken candidly of her doing everyday tasks, or even just staring off into space.  
  
Her face warmed with happy embarrassment. She wasn’t entirely pleased he took so many photos of her without her knowledge, but they weren’t crude or overly personal. If anything, she’d describe them as genuine. And even though they weren’t worthy of any photography awards, Lucifer had kept the photos as a memento to treasure. It was rather sweet, she thought.  
  
Though, she had to admit, while a good majority of the photos were lovely, a few of them weren’t all that appealing. There were a few shots catching her in the act of blinking, and others where she was eating food rather unattractively. Of course, Lucifer would probably tell her how beautiful she looked in every photo, but she personally found them a bit mortifying.  
  
“Hey, can I delete some photos you have of me? I look pretty silly in a few of these,” she said, showing him the screen.  
  
“No,” Lucifer said curtly, snatching the phone out of her hand.  
  
Chloe was too stunned to react at first. “Uh, okay?”  
  
Lucifer winced at the faint crack his gruff sequestration had created, and carefully put the phone away before shooting Chloe a bashful look. “Apologies, Detective, but I’d rather not part with any of the photos, if that’s fine by you. They’re...important to me.”  
  
Obviously, Chloe thought, her eyebrow raised at his behaviour.  
  
“Fine,” she said. “Just don’t just go around sharing the bad ones, got it. I already have enough awkward photos of me on the Internet.”  
  
“I would never,” Lucifer said with complete sincerity.  
  
“Good.”  
  
The conversation ended there for a while, but thankfully the tension of the earlier morning had eased somewhat, enough for Chloe to breathe a little easier. Even though Lucifer was still being rather questionable, their chat and the new information she’d learned had helped her calm down and think a bit more rationally. She propped her arm on the door and rested her head on her knuckles as she watched the foggy landscape drift by. The car rumbled underneath them as blank signs uselessly directed them off the freeway.  
  
“Since Linda is out of question,” Lucifer said eventually, “do you have anything else in mind of how I should deal with the manifestations, Detective?”  
  
Chloe thought about it. “Well, you said they go away if you stop thinking about them. So...just stop thinking about them.”  
  
Lucifer cackled. “Oh, Detective, that is truly wonderful advice! Nay, groundbreaking, even. I can’t wait to hear what you come up with next. How about telling me not to imagine a white bear, hm? I’m sure that’ll go down smoothly. I will be sure to applaud your brilliance once I’ve inadvertently manifested a bunch of raging—”  
  
“Alright, alright, I get it,” Chloe muttered. “You don’t have to be such an arsehole about it.”  
  
Lucifer fixated his gaze on the road ahead of them, and swallowed. “Apologies again, Detective,” he said. “I don’t mean to be so short with you today.”  
  
“It’s fine. I get it, you’re stressed—”  
  
“‘Stressed’,” Lucifer echoed incredulously. “Darling, the Devil doesn’t get stressed.”  
  
“Really?” Chloe said, sceptical.  
  
“Alright, perhaps I am one to overthink on occasion, but I hardly get stressed. And I certainly am _not_ stressed right now.”  
  
Chloe raised her eyebrow. In her head, she saw Lucifer accepting the Academy Award for Best Show of Denial, having won it through sheer force of will. Upon her imaginary stage, he gave thanks to his abysmal coping skills for getting him this far, and his complete lack of emotional intelligence for supporting him the whole way. He even blew kisses to the crowd.

“Right,” she drawled, making clear her disbelief. Then, with a sigh, she said, “I might be. Stressed, that is.” What an understatement, but hey, at least it wasn’t denial, so she was beating Lucifer in that department.  
  
Lucifer regarded her with concern. “Are you okay?” he asked awkwardly. “Should I...do anything?”

 _Help me stop you from ending the world._ “Help me fix this,” she said instead.

Lucifer didn’t answer immediately, a strangely sad look on his face as he regarded her. He sighed and looked ahead.  
  
“I’ll do my best.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song playing on the radio at the start of this chapter is 'The Last Day on Earth' by Kate Miller-Heidke. It's actually a song that means a lot to me, as it was played at a funeral of someone my family was friends with, and I thought it was fitting for the story, so I thought I'd include it. :)


	7. Trail of Destruction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter in which I researched a bunch of clothes from throughout history and it shows.

The moment the elevator doors opened, Chloe knew something was off.  
  
At first glance, everything seemed normal. Just as it was the day before, the precinct was busy, with her colleagues doing their usual activities. Civilians loitered around waiting to be attended. Many she recognised from the day before, still wearing their Halloween costumes, but there seemed to be a few more people in today that she didn’t recognise. She made her way across the floor, with Lucifer trailing along beside her.  
  
It was the way he regarded the civilians warily that helped her realise what exactly was off. Ahead of her, a group of officers brushed past a tall man with dark and wavy hair that ended at his chin, and who had apparently old-fashioned tastes in suits. They passed him by without glancing or even acknowledging his presence. The man was not alone in being disregarded so keenly. As she looked around, Chloe realised that every single of the civilians that lingered throughout the room went ignored.  
  
No, not ignored. _Unseen._  
  
“The clothes they’re all wearing,” Chloe said, “it’s not for Halloween, is it?”  
  
Lucifer shook his head.  
  
“What do we do?” Chloe whispered under her breath as she passed someone dressed like they’d just come off the set of a pirate movie, and a woman who wore a brightly coloured lehenga choli and had mehndi covering her palms. They both glared at Lucifer as he passed.  
  
“Just ignore them,” Lucifer told her, pulling her closer to him. “They won’t bother us if we don’t bother them.”  
  
“Are you sure ignoring them is a good idea?”  
  
“It’s worked so far.”  
  
“But it hasn’t exactly fixed the problem, now has it?” Chloe hissed, gesturing pointedly at the manifestations scattered around the room.  
  
Lucifer pouted. “No, I suppose not.” He growled in frustration. “Fine, do you have any better ideas, Detective? Other than not thinking about them?”  
  
“Maybe...talk to them?” Chloe suggested.  
  
“I said ‘better’ ideas, Detective,” Lucifer said irritably, “not nonsensical acts of stupidity.”  
  
Chloe glared at him, rankled. “It’s not like I have experience with this kind of crap, Lucifer! How am I supposed to know what to do?”  
  
“Because you’re brilliant and smart, and far, far better than me at solving problems.”  
  
“Oh,” Chloe said, placated by his compliments and the embarrassed tinge on his cheeks. “Well, maybe we should work together on figuring this out. Be a united front. Your celestial knowledge plus my detective skills.”  
  
Lucifer nodded. “A united front,” he agreed.  
  
“Hey, Lucifer, Decker!”  
  
They turned, and saw Ella waving to them from her lab. Once she was sure she had their attention, she gestured for them to come in. She was grinning, her excitement almost tangible even from a distance. Chloe and Lucifer shared a look before wandering over.  
  
“Hey Ella,” Chloe greeted as she entered the lab. It was surprisingly empty, only the table and computer in the room. “What’s up?”  
  
“I got some of the test results back on our churchgoer Joan Doe. And man, is it a doozy!” Ella said, gesticulating energetically. The snake on her shirt—now alone and surrounded by a cloud of text cheering about how everything was fine, really—smiled with the same enthusiasm. “I’m totally bringing this up at the next forensics conference.”  
  
That didn’t bode well. Chloe followed Ella to her computer. “Do the results give us any idea of who the victim is?”  
  
“That’s the thing,” Ella said, as she pointed at the monitor, where strings of scientific information that Chloe didn’t particularly understand filled the screen. “The DNA is inconclusive. It isn’t unique to one person.”  
  
“They’re a twin?” Lucifer asked. He sent a pitying look to one of the photographs of the victim that was lying on the table. “Oh, the poor sod.”  
  
“No, I mean, it’s not just one person’s strand of DNA,” Ella said. She paused for a moment, letting them sit in anticipation for a moment before she said, “It’s _tens of thousands_ of people’s DNA. All from _one_ sample of DNA. Isn’t that crazy?”  
  
“What? Is that even possible?” Chloe said. "Can someone have that much DNA on them?"  
  
“Perhaps, prior to their death, the victim had a very, _very_ sizable orgy?” Lucifer suggested. “That sort of activity certainly leads to a lot of...well, DNA.”  
  
Chloe rubbed her forehead. “Seriously, Lucifer. _That’s_ your first conclusion? For one, there is no way one person could sleep with that many people in a reasonable span of time, and for two, I’m pretty sure we would’ve heard about something _that_ big.”  
  
Ella pointed to Chloe and nodded. “She’s not wrong. And yeah, sure, maybe that could be the reason. Super duper improbable, obviously, and crazy on all levels, but DNA samples _can_ mix together and skew results, so points to you there, Lucifer.  
  
But,” she continued, “that would only really make sense if I took an external DNA sample. This is a sample from their _blood_. So, unless our victim somehow got thousands and thousands of blood transfusions from a great big bunch of people recently, there’s no way there could be more than one source of DNA.”  
  
“So, what you’re saying is...?” Chloe prompted.  
  
“That our victim’s DNA is naturally comprised of strands from thousands and thousands of different people. Their body is basically a finely made and incredibly complex chimera.” Ella mimicked an explosion, splaying out her hands on both sides of her head. “Mind blowing, right?”  
  
Chloe winced. She didn’t want to ruin Ella’s excitement but there was no ignoring the most obvious issue. “It doesn’t really help us on the case, though, does it? We can't ID the victim with this.”  
  
Ella deflated ever so slightly. “I suppose it’s not great that it can’t help us with that,” she said with a grimace. “Sorry, I shouldn’t be so excited by a dead end. But it’s just...this is like full-blown fantasy stuff, y’know. You don’t see this sort of stuff every day.”  
  
“Ahem,” Lucifer said, waving his hands up and down his body.  
  
Ella shot him a deadpan look.“I meant witches and faeries kind of fantasy, not enchanting good looks, Lucifer. You don’t count.”  
  
Lucifer made an offended sound of protest.  
  
Before he could speak, Ella went on. “I’ll try to find something more conclusive.”  
  
She went to go back to her instruments, but Chloe gripped her shoulder, stopping her.  
  
“Actually, Ella,” Chloe said, “I think it might have actually helped me figure out who our victim is.”  
  
“It did?” Lucifer and Ella said together with shared surprise.  
  
“Yeah. Lucifer, can I talk to you for a second? Privately,” she added, shooting Ella an apologetic look.

“Oh, no worries, I'll give you two some space,” Ella said. “But you totally got to tell me your theory later, alright. Have fun you two. Oh, and don’t forget to say goodbye on your way out.” She gave a two finger salute and winked, and then left the lab, leaving Lucifer and Chloe alone in the room.

Chloe suffered the stillness in the room for barely a few seconds before giving into the nervous energy that was coiled inside her like a spring. She paced the span of the room from one end to the other, the same route back and forth, back and forth. Much like the indecisive thoughts that were warring in her head.

Was what she suspected the truth? Or was she seeing things that weren't there? Was it a real possibility? Or was all just a string of coincidences?

Lucifer leaned against the table and crossed his arms, watching her. His own agitation made itself known in the tapping of his fingers against his sleeves, and the aborted motions he made every so often to fiddle with his cuffs only to reign himself in every time, trying his hardest to appear nonchalant. Eventually he gave up on the affectation and pouted.

“Well, come on then, don't leave me in anticipation,” he said. “What curious theory have you got running rampant in your head, hm?”

Chloe whirled around to face him and in a rush said, “How do you feel about witch-hunts?”  
  
Lucifer’s eyebrows shot up his forehead as he reeled back. With a nervous scoff, he said, “I don’t see the relevance between this and the case.”  
  
“The vic was a suspected witch,” Chloe said.

"Yes, but what do my _feelings_ have to do with that?"

Chloe glanced at the impossible DNA results on the monitor. “I'm starting to think it has a lot to do with the case,” she murmured. Louder, she added, “So, how do the witch-hunts make you feel?”

Lucifer turned his head away like a child who had just been served boiled vegetables. “I'd rather not talk about it,” he muttered.

"But you do have strong feelings about them, yeah?"

“How could I not?” Lucifer said, his voice lost in the valley between anger and remorse. “Thousands of innocent people died for merely being suspected of being associated with me. Every accusation, every death sentence bore my name and title, and I wasn't even bloody there.”

“So you didn't know any of the victims personally?” Chloe asked.

Lucifer hunched in on himself. “I knew a few, yes,” he admitted, “but after they...” He swallowed. “Well, I tended towards the less superstitious parts of the world during those few centuries. Places where my name didn't send people into paranoia.”

Chloe felt a spike of sympathy for him as his confession. Lucifer was always brazenly introducing himself to everyone he met, regardless of their faith or lack thereof. He didn’t care how they reacted, comfortable in his own honesty. But hearing him now, she realised maybe the reason he did it so confidently was because he _could_ . Because he wouldn’t be punished for it. It would have been a different picture all those centuries ago: his name would likely have resulted in scorn, aggression and perhaps even far worse responses.  
  
Chloe shook off the thoughts, and focused instead on the matter at hand.  
  
“Which means you don’t have many memories of any of the victims,” she said.  
  
“...No,” Lucifer said hesitantly. “What are you getting at, Detective?”  
  
“Can a tulpa be conjured through means other than memory or concentrated thought?” Chloe went on. “Maybe through an intense emotion, perhaps?”  
  
Lucifer twisted his ring. “...Yes, it can happen. But they’re rather abstract in comparison.”  
  
“Abstract? Like, say, a nameless, unidentifiable witch burned and hanged in a church?”  
  
“What are you implying?” Lucifer said, his eyes narrowing.  
  
“Lucifer, don’t you see?” Chloe said. “The victim of our case wasn’t just someone who was killed as a result of a witch-hunt. They’re the literal representation of _every_ victim of _every_ witch hunt that has happened throughout history. Everyone who ever died because they were thought to be working with you. That’s why their DNA is like that. Because you manifested all of those people into one single simulacrum.”  
  
Lucifer stared at her, expressionless save for the slight widening of his eyes. And then, before Chloe’s eyes, he built up a masquerade of amused bafflement, tuning and tweaking each muscle into an almost genuine smile. He blew out a breathy, hollow laugh. “That’s preposterous.”  
  
“Is it?” Chloe questioned disbelievingly. “There are imaginary ghosts right outside that door. It’s not exactly beyond the realm of reason that our murder victim is quite literally the manifestation of your guilt.”  
  
A violent crack cleaved through Lucifer’s humoured veneer. “I do _not_ feel guilty,” he hissed. 

“You clearly feel something about it.”

Lucifer pushed himself off the table. “Well, it can’t be bloody guilt! Why should I even feel guilty?” he spat, towering over her. “It wasn’t my fault! I didn’t kill them. It was those wicked, intolerant, self-righteous bastards! Not me!”  
  
The room filled with his harsh, panting breaths. Chloe met Lucifer’s gleaming red eyes, and said as calmly as she could, “Then what is it you feel, if not guilt?”  
  
Lucifer faltered, and with a blink, the blazing red in his iris’ vanished. He retreated back a step, every sharp edge of his posture turning dull as his anger burned out.  
  
“I didn’t kill them...”  
  
“But?” Chloe said.  
  
Lucifer swallowed, and darted his eyes away, speaking instead to the wall. “Those people died because awful monsters wanted to rid the world of darkness and sin. Rid the world of _me_ ,” he said, his voice catching in his throat. “All that punishment, all that misery, and for what? I’m still here. They didn’t do a damn thing to me. I went on unscathed by it all, and you know what’s worse, Detective? I ignored it. I couldn’t stand all the horrible slander those bastards spread about me, so I left.” He breathed out a sob. “I left those people to die in my stead.”

“Oh, Lucifer,” Chloe said, her eyes stinging.  
  
She pulled him into a hug and pressed his head into her collarbone. Lucifer took a while to untense, but when he did, he sunk into her like she was the ocean. His shoulders shook within her embrace. Chloe brushed one hand through his hair and drew soothing circles on his back with the other.  
  
“It wasn’t your—”  
  
“Please don’t try to console me with empty platitudes,” Lucifer interrupted. “I don’t want you to justify my actions.”  
  
“Okay,” Chloe told him, tightening her hold. “I won’t. But you know I’m here for you, alright. I always will be.”  
  
Lucifer’s sigh was warm against her skin. “I know.”  
  
They stayed in the embrace for quite some time, neither one of them speaking. It was desperate, the way they clung to each other, but at the same time, there was something almost peaceful about it, a bubble surrounding them and keeping the world and all the ghosts that haunted it from encroaching into their moment.  
  
“So I guess we solved the witch’s case, huh?” Chloe said after a while. It took all her will to tear herself out of the hug, but they couldn’t stay in the peace forever. They had work to do.  
  
Lucifer chuckled softly. “Yes, I suppose we did.”  
  
“We can’t exactly arrest a bunch of historical bible thumpers and tattletales, though,” Chloe said. “And we’re going to have to say the victim is an unidentified person, since we can’t exactly put down that they’re a metaphor brought to life. Damn, the paperwork for this is going to be awful.”  
  
“I do not envy you, Detective.”  
  
“I wasn’t saying ‘we’ for fun, Lucifer. You took the lead on the case. You have to help on the paperwork.”  
  
“Must I?” Lucifer whined.  
  
“Don’t worry, I won’t make you do it now,” Chloe assured him. “There’s still the case of the tulpas to deal with. I’d say that’s far more pressing right now.”  
  
She eyed a manifestation that lurked just outside the lab window, a woman who seemed to have been pulled straight out of the 17th century. She was wearing a classical waistcoat, along with black justaucorps and breeches. Her hair styled with a fontange, and she had a rapier pointed in Lucifer’s direction, as if waiting for him to duel her. Lucifer regarded the woman with a wince.  
  
“I’d rather paperwork over meeting the pointy end of Mademoiselle Maupin’s sword. And believe me, Detective, she wouldn’t hesitate to use it. She was...well, spirited, if you pardon the pun.” He paused for a second, regarding Chloe’s face. “Because she’s a spir—”  
  
“Yes, I get it,” Chloe said with a roll of her eyes. She surveyed the bullpen, and noted the collective gaze of the manifestations that was focused intently on Lucifer. “They all seem really angry at you. Why is that? Because when I talked to Saint-Saëns, he didn’t seem to hold any grudge towards you, and you accidentally sent him to his death. What could you have done to all these people that was worse than that?”  
  
Lucifer propped his elbow on the palm on his other hand and covered his eyes. “They’re angry because of me,” he admitted.  
  
“Yeah, I got that from the intense I-want-to-maim-you-severely stares they’re all sending you.”  
  
“No, no,” Lucifer said, waving her words away. “I don’t mean they’re angry because of the wrongs I did to them during their lifetimes. They're angry at me because my own feelings have tainted my memories of them. I feel,”—he sighed, and twisted his cufflinks, and when he spoke again, it was with great reluctance—“ _ashamed_ of what I did to all of them, and so they are angry at me, because I suppose somewhere in my mind a part of me thinks I deserve their rage.”  
  
Chloe found herself snorting before she could even produce a considerate reply. She quickly slapped her hand over her mouth to muffle herself, but it was too late.  
  
“I don’t see how this is a laughing matter,” Lucifer said, affronted.  
  
“Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to be rude,” Chloe said, trying her best to sound contrite. “It’s just...”  
  
“What?”  
  
“After all these years of you projecting your issues onto cases, we’re now solving a case about you projecting your issues.”  
  
Lucifer blinked, and the hurt in his expression smoothed away. His lips quirked up in a fleeting smile. “Well, if you look at it that way, I suppose it is rather amusing.”  
  
Chloe sobered. “If that’s the case, I think I have an idea on how we can deal with them.”  
  
“And what’s that?”  
  
“Since you're projecting your emotions onto the manifestations, then maybe all you need to do to get rid of them is to reconcile with them. Come to terms with whatever you did to them that makes you feel so ashamed.”  
  
Lucifer huffed. “So we’re back to talking to them, then.”  
  
“Yes, but I really think that’s what you need to do, Lucifer. You can’t just ignore your guilt and leave it to fester. You have to face it and work through it. Maybe then you can truly forgive yourself.”  
  
“That’s not necessary. I’ve already forgave myself, if you recall.”  
  
“No, you made the choice to take the first step,” Chloe said. “It’s not an immediate thing, Lucifer. It takes time.”

Lucifer looked as if he was about to argue, but he stopped himself. He sighed, resigned. “You sound like Doctor Linda. She told me something rather similar.”  
  
“Well, if the manifestations are any proof, she was right. You haven’t truly forgiven yourself, Lucifer. Not yet. You have to try.”  
  
“I still don’t know how,” Lucifer confessed. He rubbed a hand down his face, his fingers trembling. “Especially not with this. This isn’t some misplaced blame placed upon me by humanity. I am actually responsible for these sins.”  
  
“If that’s true,” Chloe said, taking his hands into hers, “then pretending it never happened won’t help you move forward. If you want to redeem yourself for your mistakes, you have to work for it, really work for it. You can’t keep running from your past, Lucifer. You have to confront it.”

 _Or else we’re all doomed_ , Chloe thought.  
  
Lucifer bowed his head, and fretfully ran his thumbs up and down her knuckles.  
  
“I suppose I can try,” he murmured.  
  
“Thank you,” she said. She kissed him on the cheek. Her lips lingered there for a moment as she enjoyed the close proximity, knowing it wouldn’t last. She’d say something that would hurt him, and he’d pull away, take his hand out of hers and distanced himself. It was unfortunately becoming quite the trend. With a sigh, Chloe drifted away and moved to withdraw her hand away before he could do it himself. “Do you want to talk to them alone or—”  
  
“No, I want you there,” Lucifer said as he tightened his grip on her hand, halting her retreat. It was enough to startle a quiet gasp out of Chloe. “I don’t think I could speak to them by myself. You help me be...brave.”  
  
Fondness spread throughout Chloe's body, a soft and warm fire under her skin.  
  
“Then I’ll be by your side the whole time,” she promised with a smile.  
  
Hand in hand, they left the lab. The manifestations loitered around the precinct in a scattered, incohesive fashion, with some around the desks, and others on the outer rims of the room. Despite their distance from each other, they shared the same focus: Lucifer.  
  
“So,” Chloe said, “I’m thinking that our best plan of action is to take them one at a—”  
  
“Hello phantoms!” Lucifer greeted loudly.  
  
Chloe sighed. “Or we can talk to them all at once.”  
  
The manifestations broke away from their glaring to glance at each other in confusion. A few of them hesitantly stepped towards Lucifer.  
  
“Yes, yes, gather round,” Lucifer said, gesturing to all the tulpas to come closer. “We’re going to do a bit of group therapy.”  
  
“Lucifer, is this really the best idea?” Chloe said under her breath. Some of the tulpas looked like they wanted to do far more violent things than talking. Stabbing seemed to be the champion, with several blades leveled at Lucifer, as well as a fair few guns from throughout history as well. The most interesting weapon of the lot was a sextant held posed at the ready for a good thumping.   
  
“Of course,” Lucifer said cheerily, not seeming to care about the various and sundry weapons pointed at him. “It’d take far too long to talk to them individually. This way gets all this reconciling nonsense done and dusted in a jiffy.” Louder, he said, “Come on, quickly now. Yes, you too, Giordano, I see you in the back. Come and join in. Tell me all your grievances.”  
  
From within the crowd, Dan appeared, frowning in confusion. “Uh, man, what are you doing? Who are you talking to?  
  
“None of your business,” Lucifer said cavalierly. “Now, shoo, Daniel, this doesn’t include you. I can still make amends to you, since you’re still alive and well. Come back when you’ve perished.”  
  
Dan sent Chloe a questioning look, and she returned the just-go-along-with-it expression she’d perfected over the years since she’d met Lucifer. With a shrug and a muttered “Whatever”, Dan returned to his desk and promptly ignored Lucifer’s shenanigans.  
  
The manifestations all stopped a good few paces away from Lucifer, as if they were apprehensive to get any closer. Even still, their numbers were imposing even at the distance they were keeping, enough so that Chloe couldn’t see much past the wall of people that had surrounded them.  
  
It really did make her wonder what Lucifer had done during his time on Earth to amass so many regrets.  
  
“Are you all here?” Lucifer said to the gathered crowd. “Alright, go on. Give me your worst.”  
  
For a fleeting moment, no one spoke. The manifestations, for all their glaring, didn’t seem prepared to confront Lucifer, and from the uncomfortable shifting that washed over the crowd, it was obvious that none were willing to be the first, each waiting for someone else to take the burden. The standoff went on for so long that Chloe expected Lucifer to prompt them further, but then footsteps finally broke the silence.  
  
“Yánluó Wáng,” a voice called. “We had a deal.”  
  
Lucifer whirled around.  
  
A Chinese woman dressed in a black cheongsam pushed herself through the crowd. She stared at Lucifer’s with what seemed to be indifference, but there were hints of lurking anger under the affectation of calm in the slight curl of her lip and the coiled tension in her shoulders.  
  
“Wáng nǚshì?” Lucifer said, staring at the woman with shock.  
  
She strode up to Lucifer and despite her rather unimposing figure, she made him stumble back in alarm, dragging Chloe with him. His earlier confidence seemed to have vanished completely, blown away like a house of cards.  
  
“You told me when you returned,” the woman intoned calmly, “you would teach me all about the stars. But you never came back. I waited for you, and you never came back.”  
  
“I did,” Lucifer protested, stepping back even more, as if repelled by her presence. The only thing that stopped him from going any further was the line of tulpas behind him, barring his way. “I swear to you, I did. I never break deals.”  
  
“You may have returned, yes, but you returned all too late, Yánwáng. I was gone by the time you came back.”  
  
“I didn’t expect you to die so young,” Lucifer confessed. “I thought I had time.”  
  
“There’s always an excuse, isn’t there, always some justification for your wrongdoings. Anything to help you sleep at night. Anything to ignore the trail of destruction you leave behind wherever you go.”

“No, no,” Lucifer mumbled, a lost look in his eyes.  
  
Inspired by the confrontation, another woman rushed through the crowd and leapt at Lucifer before Chloe could warn him. He startled at the sudden touch, and darted his eyes down to the woman. His skin whitened at the sight of her teary face and the blood that was splattered across her green, floor-length huipil.

“Xolotl,” the woman cried, dragging her nails across Lucifer’s chest as she wept. “you were supposed to save me. You promised. You _promised._ ”  
  
Lucifer recoiled as if hit. He pushed her away as far as he could, but it did little to stop the woman.  
  
“All you had to do was tell them I wasn’t there,” she continued. “That was all you had to do. I could’ve been spared.”  
  
Lucifer did not even try to defend himself this time.  
  
“Lucifer,” Chloe encouraged, squeezing his hand. He glanced at her, and a spark of determination, however small, lit up in his eyes.  
  
“I don’t lie,” he told the Aztec woman weakly. “Nor do I tattle. They didn’t find you because of me. That was not my fault.”  
  
“But you didn’t try to stop them from killing me once they did.”  
  
Lucifer’s mouth opened and closed without words, his eyes darting to and fro as he searched for an argument. He hadn’t managed to find one by the time the next manifestation strode forward, the crowd parting to let him through.  
  
It was Father Frank. Chloe’s heart sunk at the sight of him, and the stained clergy shirt that he wore. The blood was still fresh, even now, all these years later.  
  
Chloe felt Lucifer’s hand stiffen. “No,” he breathed, his skin going an even whiter shade of pale. “No, not you.”  
  
“Did you not think I’d be here?” Father Frank said. His voice was as calm and strong as ever, a stark contrast to the vibrant anger of the phantoms that swarmed behind him. “You were my friend, Lucifer. You were supposed to protect me.”  
  
“I tried,” Lucifer rasped.  
  
“But you let your Father use me as a pawn,” Father Frank went on, undeterred. He grasped Lucifer by the shoulders. “I deserved to be more than that. I deserved more time.”  
  
Lucifer tried to shake him off, but Father Frank held fast, never wavering. “And look at you now. All these years later, and you’re no better than you were then. Still as wicked as you ever were. I died for nothing.”  
  
The light’s in the room began to flicker in and out.  
  
“It doesn't matter how many lies you tell yourself,” Father Frank continued, and to Chloe’s alarm, the crowd as a whole began to speak in synchrony with him until the words were an overwhelming chorus, “ _how much you change yourself, that will always be the fundamental truth of you, Samael. You will always be poison. Everything you touch, you ruin. Everyone you love, you hurt. It’s inevitable."_  
  
The room went dark, and the lingering period of darkness that followed made Chloe fear the electricity had blacked out altogether, but eventually the lights returned. Chloe didn’t have a chance to be relieved.  
  
The manifestations had completely enclosed them, their breaths hot against Chloe’s skin. Each and every one was glaring at Lucifer like they were out for murder. Chloe wrenched Lucifer free of Father Frank’s grasp and dragged him away from the forest of hands scrabbling to reach him, but it did little to stir Lucifer from the wide-eyed stupor he’d fallen into.  
  
“Lucifer,” she said, shaking him frantically.  
  
He didn’t seem to hear her over the voices of the dead around him, their chorus of accusations filling the air.  
_  
_ _“You can play happy families all you want, but you know deep down you will never be worthy of such a life. Never be worthy of_ her _. You should be glad you’ll never have the chance, and the sooner you give up on those dreams, the better, for everyone. Stop pretending you’re better than you are and accept the truth.”_  
  
Underneath Chloe’s feet, the precinct trembled. The floor beneath them lost all detail, turning a blank shade of white. It was not alone. Past the crowd, Chloe could see the desks emptying of their clutter, and officers disappearing within one blink and the next. Fog, pale and formless, drifted across the room, slithering between the legs of the manifestations.  
  
_“We are the proof of your sins, and the wardens of your lies. And oh what lies you tell, Prince of Darkness. Such saccharine and pitiful hopes you have. Why should you deserve to cling to them, when we never had the chance. No. You must suffer as we did, as all those in Hell do. And as she does. You can’t change what happened. You can’t change what you did.”_  
  
A tendril of the fog whispered against Chloe’s ankle, and she stumbled back, the touch enough to see a fleeting wave of hollowness through her. They needed to go. Now.  
  
_“This is your fault.”_  
  
“Lucifer,” she shouted as loudly as she could. For good measure, she kicked his ankle to get his attention.  
  
That seemed to do the trick. Red eyes darted over to her.  
  
“Detective?” Lucifer whispered.  
  
Chloe tightened her grip on him. “We have to go!”  
  
“But you said—”  
  
“I changed my mind!” Chloe yelled. “We need to go _now_ , before you destroy all of reality!”  
  
Lucifer took in the destruction around them as if seeing it for the first time. Horror flooded across his face.  
  
“No, no, I need more time,” he mumbled.  
  
As if compelled by his words, the fog rose up from the ground like a tidal wave and swallowed up their surroundings in one swift gulp, leaving only a small clearing in which Chloe and Lucifer stood, with the remainder of the manifestations at the rims.  
  
“ _This is your fault_!” they shouted, their voices louder than ever.  
  
Chloe shook him. “Lucifer! We won’t have any more time if you stay here! Please,” she said, desperate tears streaming down her face, “we have to go.”

His wild red eyes returned to her, and he seemed to finally realise the urgency of the situation. In a rush, he picked her off the ground and into a bridal carry. His wings erupted from his back, blowing back the manifestations. Another flap sent them all tumbling into the fog.   
  
And still they cried. _“This is your fault! This is your fault!”_  
  
He spread his wings, and leapt towards the staircase. He shielded her as best he could as he smashed through the window,. The shattering of glass was startlingly loud, but not enough to drown out the words of the crowd they had left behind. Despite her better judgement, Chloe looked back. She watched as the fog swallowed up the precinct, the distant cries of dismay of Dan and Ella as clear as a bell through the cacophony of voices, which continued to chant those four words.  
  
_“This is your fault!”_  
  
As she watched the world disappear, she couldn’t help but agree with them.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a bunch of historical figures in this, so I thought I'd list them in case you wanted to know who's who.  
> \- The tall man was Oscar Wilde  
> \- The pirate was Mary Read  
> \- Mademoiselle Maupin is the individual otherwise known as Julie d'Aubigny  
> \- The Giordano that Lucifer namedrops is Giordano Bruno  
> \- The woman Lucifer refers to as Ms. Wang is Wang Zhenyi  
> \- The other two historic characters that showed up are just normal people. I thought it'd make sense not to have everyone be someone that history remembers.


	8. Walk Into The Light

Time drifted through Chloe’s head like sand through a broken hourglass, spilling out in all the wrong directions. She had no idea how long it’d been since they’d escaped the precinct, the only measure of time the beat of Lucifer’s wings. It didn’t help that everything as far as the eye could see was the same flat nothingness, never changing. Maybe it’d been hours, or maybe just seconds, but eventually they were landing.  
  
The pavement was soundless underneath them, not so much as a crunch when Lucifer’s shoes touched down. That small, unimportant detail was enough to make Chloe’s ribs tightened like a vice on her lungs.  
  
The world was ending. Quietly, swiftly, and without any ceremony, but it was ending all the same. Disappearing before her very eyes, like a jigsaw puzzle of life and sensations coming undone. All her attempts to stop it had only brought it about quicker.   
  
Lucifer’s wings vanished in a woosh, and Chloe squinted against the pale glare of the fog that drifted at the edge of the pavement and up the sides of the street’s lone building. It didn’t take her long to realise where they were.

They were outside the entrance to Lux. Chloe shook her head.

“No, we can’t be here. I need to go home. Trixie’s there. I need to—”  
  
“She’s not there,” Lucifer murmured.

Chloe froze. “No, no, don’t you dare say that. She is. She _has_ to be.”

Lucifer bowed his head and coiled himself in tightly, making himself as non-threatening as possible. She recognised that posture, that look in his eyes. It was the same affectation she put in place whenever she told the friends and family of a victim that their loved one was never coming back. Lucifer never said the words. He didn’t have to. All he said was “I’m sorry”.  
  
The world ended in that moment. The ground crumbled away under Chloe’s feet and an abyss took its place. With nothing to hold onto, she fell into its depths. She screamed and screamed as she tumbled into Hell, and time distorted all the more, hours condensed to only a few minutes.  
  
But she never landed, not even when her screams faded away, not when the world around her resolved itself back to reality. The ground, her surroundings, it was all still there. It hadn’t crumbled. She had.  
  
“No,” she whispered. “Not her.”  
  
Lucifer lay his hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I know what it’s like to lose the one you love.”  
  
“No you don’t. Not like this.”  
  
She hadn’t just lost the one she loved. She had lost everything. Dan. Ella. Trixie. _Everyone._ The very world itself. It was fading away, leaving her behind. She could see it, in the slowly creeping nothing spreading against the concrete beneath, eating away at every grain, every crack and leaving a blank slate in its wake. Soon there’d be nothing left but nothingness.  
  
“I don’t want to be alone,” she whispered.  
  
Lucifer crouched beside her, his hand squeezing her shoulder. “I’m here. No matter what happens, I’m not leaving.”  
  
That wasn’t as reassuring as he seemed to think it was. Chloe pushed his hand away, and ignored the quiet, hurt sound he made.  
  
“I can’t...” she whispered. She cradled her head in her hands, hiding herself in the darkness behind her eyelids. “Lucifer, she’s gone because of you. All of this...it’s because of you.”  
  
There was no footstep, no sharp intake of breath, nothing to tell her his reaction, but she knew. One moment the warmth beside her was there, and then it was gone. He’d retreated. Just like always.  
  
Perhaps it was the fear he’d leave her altogether, or the small spark of hope in her chest that shone like a lighthouse in her misery, but she reached towards him and found his sleeve. She gripped it tight and tugged, stopping him. 

“You can’t keep running away,” she murmured. “You can’t fix this if you’re gone.”  
  
“I don’t think I can fix this,” Lucifer admitted, his voice so soft, so brittle, that it was only the complete silence of the nothingness that allowed her to catch his words.  
  
 _I don’t think,_ he said. Not _There’s no chance,_ or _I’m sorry, but there’s no way._ Nothing so final, nothing so damning. There was possibility in _I don’t think_ , a room for opportunity. Chloe clung to his lack of conviction like a lifeline. “We can try.”  
  
She had to believe they could. That there was a way to get it all back, get Trixie and the others back. Otherwise, she’d rather disappear along with them than stay in the empty grave of the world she loved, alone with the man who had killed it.  
  
Lucifer didn’t pull away from her, nor did he return to her side. He hovered his fingers over her wrist, leaving behind the lightest of sensations as his skin brushed the tips of her hairs. He followed the contours of her bones and veins until he reached the end of her sleeve, where he lingered indecisively. Eventually, he drifted back towards her hand. It felt too much like he was memorising her, too much like the beginnings of a goodbye, and Chloe clung all the tighter to the sleeve that kept him moored to him.  
  
“Please,” she said.  
  
Lucifer’s hand stopped at her knuckles, and for a second that lasted far too long Chloe thought he would keep going until she had only the fading warmth of his fingers on hers to remember him by. But then the second ended, and Lucifer pressed his palm into hers and squeezed.  
  
“If that is what you desire,” he said, “then I will try.”  
  
That was all she needed to hear. The world settled into something resembling stability, and Chloe breathed in a deep, filling breath. The pain was still there, a faint trace she couldn’t shake, but the possibility of salvaging the world was enough for her to focus her mind not on what had happened, but on what she could do.  
  
She pushed herself to her knees, and Lucifer helped her the rest of the way, pulling her to her feet. She stumbled like a newborn deer. It was only his grip that kept her from falling. He didn’t let go.  
  
“What should we do?” Lucifer asked.  
  
“Find you some way to deal with all the guilt you’re harbouring.”  
  
Lucifer gave no visible reaction beyond a sigh. “And how exactly are we going to do that?”  
  
She regarded the fog that lingered on the edges of her vision. It walled them in. Not in a physical way, of course—she could walk right through it if she wanted to, and keep going, without fear of running into any obstacle. No, it was the kind of wall that blocked her in the same way darkness repels those who fear it. For all its innocuous appearance, Chloe knew that if she was to walk into the fog, she’d never find her way out.  
  
There was only one to go, one way through. The doors to Lux, as if hearing her thoughts, opened. Light and sound, faint though they were, beckoned them to come inside.  
  
“I suppose we have to walk into the light,” she said with a rueful smile.  
  
“That’s certainly one way of putting it.” Lucifer glanced back at the ever-encroaching fog. “But it seems the only choice we have.”  
  
Together, they walked into the nightclub, and Chloe almost sighed in relief when she heard her own footstep echo in the white noise. There was still life here, clinging on despite all the destruction outside.  
  
Without the customary queue of people waiting to go inside, it didn’t take them long to enter into the upstairs section of Lux. The light was too dim for Chloe to see much of the club, but she could tell it was empty.  
  
Or, at least, almost empty. Lucifer’s footsteps faltered ahead of her when a voice, as sweet as a siren’s call, drifted up the stairs.  
  
“— _I pretend too much, I’m lonely but no one can tell._ ”  
  
“Of course,” Lucifer said, looking out onto the club. “I should have known she’d be here.”  
  
“ _Oh yes, I'm the great pretender,_ ” the voice went on, “ _Adrift in a world of my own, I play the game but to my real shame, You've left me to dream all alone.”_

Lucifer unwound his fingers from Chloe and he wandered to the beginning of the staircase.  
  
“What are you doing?” Chloe asked.  
  
Lucifer smiled at her over his shoulder. “I believe Linda would call it ‘closure’.”

He trotted down the stairs, and Chloe followed. As soon as she reached the bottom, a spotlight lit up over her. She blinked, blinded momentarily. She barely had any time to adjust before it raced away towards the piano. It played without a player, the master of its own tune. But, while it played on its own, it did not play alone.  
  
Delilah sat upon the lid of the piano, her bloodied fur coat draped beside her. The glass sprinkled on her cheeks shone like glitter make-up, marred only the black tear-stains that trailed down her face.  
  
“ _Too real is this feeling of make-believe_ ,” she sang to the room. “ _Too real when I feel what my heart can't conceal.”_ _  
_  
Lucifer walked into the spotlight. The smile Delilah sent him so radiant she deserved the title of ‘Lightbringer’ as much as the man beside her. There was no anger in her expression, hidden or otherwise, and when she spoke, it wasn’t an accusation that fell from her tongue.

“Will you finish this song with me? For old times’ sake?”  
  
Lucifer planted a light kiss on her forehead. “Of course, darling. I’d love to.”  
  
He took his place at the piano, and the song did not so much as skip a key as he seamlessly took control of the tune. The piano had been waiting for him, just as Delilah had.  
  
“ _Oh yes, I'm the great pretender,”_ they sang together, in a perfect harmony that spoke of years of shared experience. “ _Just laughing and gay like a clown, I seem to be what I'm not you see, I'm wearing my heart like a crown, Pretending that you're still around._ ”  
  
As they went on, the lights around the room grew brighter, and as they did, the empty spaces filled up with ghosts. It was like watching a memory slowly being remembered, piece by piece until it was complete. As Chloe swept her gaze of the crowd, she realised that it wasn’t just made up of the ghosts they’d left behind at the precinct. There were others she hadn’t seen before, and others she had. Charlotte. Camille Saint-Saëns. Hypatia. The police officer from the church whose name Chloe finally remembered was Joan.  
  
They all danced together, some in pairs and others alone. Their movements were slow, graceful, more befitting of a ballroom than a night club dance floor. They didn’t seem to care that Lucifer was in the room, their anger from earlier now non-existent. The crowd focused only on the music, their faces glistening like stars in the light.  
  
They were crying, Chloe realised. Every single one of them was crying.  
  
And, as she brushed her hand across her cheek, Chloe realised she was crying too. She looked over to Lucifer, but found his own eyes to dry. But his voice told another story. It cracked and strained, like a record decayed not by time but by emotion.  
  
“ _Pretending that you're,_ ” he cried, his words tremulous, “ _Pretending that you're still around._ ”  
  
He played the final chords, swaying with the sound. And then, with one last note, the song ended, as all songs eventually do. Lucifer sat there for some time, panting, staring down at the keys. Eventually, with shaky movements, he closed the fallboard. He reached up for the glass of whiskey that wasn’t there. He blinked back from whatever scene he’d lost himself in, and stared forlornly at the empty space under his fingers. Before he could withdraw, Delilah reached across the piano to Lucifer and placed her hand over his.  
  
“You know why we’re all here, don’t you,” she said.  
  
Lucifer out to the room, over the crowd that continued to dance in the silence. “I hurt you,” he said. “All of you.”  
  
“Oh, Lucifer.” Delilah patted his hand. “Always so quick to remember the worst parts. You did so many good things for us. For _me._ If not for what you did, I would likely have gone forgotten, my songs unheard.”  
  
“If not for me,” Lucifer said, face screwed up from the bitterness of his own voice, “you’d still be alive.”  
  
“You act like that was in your control. As if you knew what would become of me the day you opened my life to new opportunities. But you didn’t know, did you?”  
  
Lucifer lowered his head. “No, I didn’t,” he murmured.

“The world doesn’t revolve around you, Lucifer,” Delilah said, standing up. “I made my choices, independent of you and the favour you gave to me. The consequences that came about were because of my actions, not yours. Stop blaming yourself for things you had no control over.”  
  
“What about the things I did have control over then, hm?” Lucifer asked sharply. “Should I just forget those and pretend I’m guiltless?”  
  
“If you’re asking that as a question, then you know that it’s not the answer,” Delilah said.  
  
Lucifer rolled his eyes with a groan. “You were never this bloody vague in real life.”  
  
Delilah chuckled. “Yes, well, memories can be quite vague, can’t they?”  
  
“Not in my experience,” Lucifer said. “I remember everything perfectly.”  
  
“But not always authentically,” she said, which made Lucifer give an affronted scoff. She sat down beside him, and placed her hand on his cheek, forcing him to look at her. “Even you are not immune to romanticising or corrupting a memory to suit the narrative you have for yourself. You think yourself as wicked, and so the smallest of mistakes becomes the greatest of evils. You’ve put your every action under a microscope, looked so deeply for every flaw, that you stopped looking at the bigger picture.”  
  
Lucifer swallowed, loud enough for Chloe to hear even from where she stood, a few paces away. “And what is the bigger picture?”  
  
“That for every mistake you’ve made, you’ve made twice as many amends. You’ve helped so many people throughout history, Lucifer, inspired so many people to be better, to chase their dreams. Just because it didn’t always work out the way you hoped, doesn’t mean it didn’t work out for everyone. You can’t fault yourself for not being perfect. Making mistakes doesn’t make you evil, and it doesn’t make you deserving of punishment.”  
  
“I don’t think I’m ready to believe that,” Lucifer admitted, plucking her hand from his face. “I want to, of course. Why else would you be telling me? You’re just a figment of my imagination, telling me everything I want to hear.”  
  
“Or perhaps I’m telling you what you _need_ to hear?”  
  
Lucifer scoffed. “Right, of course. Is that why you are being so kind to me? Because I _need_ to hear excuses? Because I _need_ some way to trick myself into not feeling guilty so all of you go away and everything goes back to the way it was?” He shook his head. “You must know that your platitudes are little more than paper over the cracks. One way or another, this feeling always comes back. I can’t fix this by lying to myself.”  
  
“Of course not. You’ve known what you’ve had to do to fix this the whole time,” Delilah said. She wiped away a tear that lingered on her cheek. “You’ve been so focused on your guilt that you haven’t spent any time dealing with your grief. You can’t run any longer, Lucifer. You have to face what happened.”  
  
Lucifer didn’t protest her words. He crumpled, slowly at first with the slightest of twitches, of sinking motions, then all too quickly. His shoulders shook with quiet, shaking breaths. It was only his hands propping up his head, that seemed to keep him from falling apart altogether.  
  
“Lucifer?” Chloe called, stepping towards the piano. “What does she mean? What do you have to do?”  
  
He didn’t speak for some time, caught up in the net of his misery. It was only when Chloe touched his shoulder that he broke free. He sighed, a deep, broken sound, and straightened. “We have to go to the source of all this,” he murmured. He glanced up at the elevator, which promptly opened with a ding. “Go where all of this began.”  
  
“The Penthouse?”  
  
Lucifer provided no answer. He stood up, and with one last look to Delilah and the room of phantoms, he made his way to the stairs.  
  
“Come on, Detective.”  
  
Reluctantly, Chloe trailed after him. They reached the elevator, but before Lucifer could press the button, Chloe caught his wrist. “What about the tulpas?”  
  
“Dig up the roots,” Lucifer said sombrely, “and the tree will fall.”  
  
“Now who’s the one being vague,” Chloe said, irritated.  
  
But Lucifer didn’t clarify himself any further, staring at her with half-lidded, tired eyes. There was a distinct shimmer there that shone all the brighter when the elevator doors opened. Lucifer hovered on the threshold, dozens of emotions warring across his face as he struggled to step forward.  
  
“Lucifer,” Chloe said, “what’s up there?”  
  
After a lingering pause, he said, “The truth.”  
  
He crossed the threshold, and with nowhere else to go, Chloe did the same. The doors closed them in, and they made their way up through the building. There was no motion or sound to tell Chloe that they were moving at all, but she knew from the deepening anxiousness of Lucifer’s fidgeting that they were.  
  
The elevator ride seemed to go on forever, and every time Chloe was sure they were about to reach the Penthouse, it kept on going. The destination raced away each time like a rabbit chased by a reluctant fox.  
  
“You were wonderful, you know,” Lucifer said, when they’d made the distance between Lux and the Penthouse three times over. He didn’t look at her as he said it, as if voicing his thoughts aloud rather than to her. “I'm sorry if I ever said anything that made you doubt that. I speak only the truth when I say that I have cherished the days I’ve spent with you.”  
  
He finally looked at her, and reached over to trail his fingers down her cheek.  
  
“For what is about to happen,” he said, “I am truly sorry.”  
  
“Lucifer, what—”  
  
The elevator doors opened.  
  
Uriel was waiting for them.  
  
Chloe wasn’t sure how she recognised him, given the lack of resemblance between him and Lucifer, but the name came to her head unprompted the moment she saw him. Lucifer flinched at the sight of him, but he was quick to recover, an eerie calm passing over his face. He glanced at her from the corner of his eye, and threaded his fingers through hers.  
  
“Help me be brave,” he whispered, squeezing her hand.  
  
Despite the fear that churned inside her, Chloe nodded. “I’m here.”  
  
With a steadying breath, Lucifer stepped forward.  
  
“Hello, brother,” Uriel said, a placid smile planted across his face. “Welcome home.”  
  
Lucifer scowled. “I’d rather skip the pleasantries, if you don’t mind. No need to delay the inevitable any further.”

“Impatient, are we?”  
  
“Hardly,” Lucifer shot back. “If it was up to me, I’d avoid this all together.”  
  
“But it is up to you, brother.” Uriel looked around the room. “All of this is. Your own little tragedy, playing out in the most wondrous of theatres. And we both know how this tragedy ends.”

He raised his hand, and in his open palm, a white, elegant blade materialised.  
  
Its very appearance seemed to sap all of Lucifer’s will out of him. He stared at it, transfixed. It seemed almost to compel him forward, his each step faltering with only the slightest of hesitation. Chloe was dragged along, a useless anchor.  
  
“Lucifer,” she barked, “Lucifer! Stop!”  
  
He shook her off, like she was no more than a fly. When she tried to reach out to him again, he swatted her hand away hard enough to bruise. Whatever stupor he was caught in forced him to see her as little more than a nuisance that he was all too willing to rid himself of. Chloe had little choice but to let him go. With nothing to hold onto to keep her dread at bay, she dug her nails into her palm.  
  
Lucifer came to a stop before his brother. Uriel gestured for him to take the blade, and Lucifer obliged, hovering his hand over it as he prepared to take it. It was only when his fingers brushed the top that he flinched out of his trance. He stumbled back, and growled.  
  
“No,” he snapped. “I’m not playing this damn game again. I’ve moved on.”  
  
Uriel raised an eyebrow. “Is that so? I couldn’t help but notice the time of year it is. Hardly a coincidence, is it.”  
  
Lucifer tensed, a crack appearing in his armour.  
  
“I don’t think you’ll ever move on from what you did to me, brother,” Uriel continued. “I’ll haunt you for the rest of your days.”  
  
“...Yes, you may be right,” Lucifer said quietly. “There will always be a part of me that mourns you, but you gave me no choice. I had to save Chloe. I do not regret that.”  
  
“Oh, I know,” Uriel said.  
  
Lucifer stiffened. “Then why are you here?”  
  
“Why do you think?”  
  
Lucifer hesitated, and twisted his cufflinks. “Grief, I suppose?” he said, his voice tinged by uncertainty.  
  
Uriel shook his head, something like amusement tugging at his lips. What he found amusing, Chloe couldn’t hope to fathom.  
  
“You carry grief that goes far deeper than my death, dear brother,” he said. “No, I’m here because, somewhere in your heart, you wanted this torture to hurt all the more. You wanted it to be poetic.” He held out the blade. “It seems only fitting I give you the means to your own destruction, since you were the means of mine.”  
  
“No,” Lucifer said, stepping back, “I don’t want to hurt you again. I _won’t._ ”  
  
“Oh, Samael,” Uriel said, breathing out a laugh. He pressed the blade in Lucifer’s palm. “You know as well as I do that this isn’t for me.”  
  
Lucifer’s hand curled around the hilt, and he whimpered. “No, no, no,” he mumbled breathlessly.  
  
“There is one thing that haunts you more than killing me,” Uriel said. “More than even your fall. More than all the other sins you’ve ever committed.”  
  
Lucifer’s eyes slid across the room until they finally came to rest on Chloe. His body twitched, as if wracked by a series of flinches he couldn’t tame. The blade trembled in his grip, and he kept making sharp motions to angle it downwards only for it to rise and shift direction. Eventually it came to a decisive standstill, like a compass settling on its true north. Which, to Chloe’s horror, seemed to be her.  
  
“Lucifer?” she questioned, frowning at the blade aimed towards her.  
  
“This was always about her,” Uriel said to Lucifer. “The one you still can’t let go, even to save yourself.”  
  
“Please,” Lucifer begged, “please, don’t make me do this.”  
  
“You wouldn’t have to if you just walked away. Left this all behind.”  
  
“I _can’t._ ”  
  
“Then you leave yourself no other option.”  
  
The blade seemed to drag Lucifer forward, and he stalked towards Chloe with slow purpose. She darted her eyes between the knife and he who wielded it. “Lucifer, what are you doing?”  
  
Tears streamed down his face. “I’m sorry.”  
  
He stabbed the blade towards her. It missed her by almost arm’s breadth, but it was enough to startle a yelp out of her as she staggered back.  
  
“Lucifer!” she cried. Lucifer continued towards her, relentless. She snapped her gaze to Uriel, panicked. “Whatever you’re doing to him, stop it!”  
  
“I’m not doing anything, Detective. I am little more than a set piece,” Uriel said with a shrug. “This is all Lucifer’s doing. If he’d only accept the truth, and stop clinging to the past, then all of this would be over. No need for pain or torment.”  
  
“What does he have to accept?” Chloe cried. “What the hell is the truth?”  
  
“I’m sure you will find out very shortly. What you do with it, is up to you,” Uriel said and then, before she could demand answers that _actually_ answered her question, he faded away to nothing before her eyes, leaving her alone with Lucifer.  
  
She rounded the glass bar-table, putting it between the two of them. “What did he mean? Lucifer, tell me!”  
  
He shook his head. “You’ll hate me,” he sputtered.  
  
Chloe eyed the knife. “I’m pretty sure I’ll deal with whatever it is a bit better than being stabbed!”  
  
For a few seconds, Lucifer managed to stop, his muscles straining against the force that compelled him forward. He flickered his eye to the elevator, the light glinting in his eyes as he stared at it. The tremor running through him settled to barely a shiver, and the knife drooped in his grasp.  
  
But then he returned his gaze to Chloe, and all the progress was lost. He levelled the blade towards her.  
  
“I don’t want to lose you,” he whispered. “Not again.”  
  
“Lucifer, please don’t,” Chloe pleaded, frantic. She retreated further, but quickly ran out of room, her back pressing into the bar. The bottles, disturbed by her impact, clinked together almost in laughter at her situation. She could go no further. Lucifer raised the blade.  
  
“Stop! Lucifer, please stop!”  
  
But he didn’t. He couldn’t.  
  
Lucifer stabbed the blade into her stomach.  
  
Chloe lurched, a pained gasp escaping her. Lucifer twisted the blade, and together they cried out in shared agony.  
  
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Lucifer whimpered, “please forgive me.”  
  
They stayed there for some time, staring into each other’s eyes, so close it felt like the cruel beginning of a passionate kiss.  
  
Lucifer pulled the blade free, and Chloe sank to the floor, panting. Pain ricocheted through her, going far deeper than merely physical sensation. There was misery and shame and longing there as well, each feeling sharper than any blade as they dug into her. She pressed her hand to the wound in the hopes that it would stop the bleeding.  
  
The fabric of her shirt was dry under her fingers. And, where the knife had dug into the skin, she felt no tear.  
  
Chloe blinked, and in her confusion, the pain waned to an almost non-existent sting. She pulled her hand away from the wound. There was no blood.  
  
“What...?” she muttered. She’d been stabbed. How could she possibly not be bleeding? Unless the blade wasn’t real?  
  
Lucifer stood a few paces away, his breaths coming out in the same pained huffs as her. He was shaking, quiet whines echoing in his throat as he stared off into some unseen distance. And there in his hand, was the blade, stained red by the blood that dripped from the end. _Her_ blood.  
  
It was real. It _had_ stabbed her. But then why...  
  
Chloe pulled her shirt up and searched her stomach for the entry wound, any sign that she’d been harmed. But there was nothing. No blood, no wound, nothing.  
  
She was fine. She was...  
  
She was...  
  
 _Oh._  
  
Of course.  
  
She slumped against the bar behind her. All the fear and panic that had been coursing through her left in flash, leaving something far darker in its wake.  
  
“So that’s the truth,” she said. "I'm—"  
  
The blade slipped from Lucifer’s fingers and clattered loudly across the ground. He sunk to his knees, and knelt before her as if in mournful prayer. His whole body heaved with his grief, tears quickly replacing the blood spots that littered the floor.  
  
Chloe swallowed back her own grief and crawled over to him. Even with the proof of his attack against her still present in the bloody blade that lay just out of reach, she found herself unable to hate him, or even fear him, though she could feel those emotions cloying for her attention, desperate to overwhelm her. She shoved them down, knowing now that they didn’t belong to her.  
  
She placed her hand on Lucifer’s shoulder. He startled at her touch, but his alarm settled quickly in confusion when she pulled him towards her.  
  
“Detective?” Lucifer said, his voice weak and strained. He blinked at her with puffy eyes. “What are...”  
  
“I think we both need a hug right now,” she said.  
  
She wrapped her arms around him, and he let her, quick to collapse into her embrace. She could feel each tremor, each shiver that ran through him as he sniffed and gasped against her shirt, trying his best to be quiet as the last of his tears escaped him. And she held him all the tighter, as desperate for comfort as he was.  
  
Because she knew now what had happened to lead them here. Knew now the one memory he couldn’t face, that he was so desperate to run away from that he’d rather pretend it never happened than accept that it had.  
  
“This isn’t real, is it?” Chloe said, and as she said it, she knew. She knew it wasn’t. Had always known, deep down. He had wanted to ignore it, and so, of course, so had she. She’d buried herself with the fantastical lies that he shoveled over her to keep herself from seeing the truth.  
  
But there was no hiding from the truth now. It was there for all to see, in the open wound that faded away in seconds. In the past guilts that plagued them. In the fading world. In the feelings that weren’t and had never been hers.  
  
“You never returned from Hell,” she said, “and that night we said goodbye—the night I told you I loved you—was the last time you ever saw me. Because I’m not here. I never was.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song Delilah and Lucifer sing is 'The Great Pretender', originally by the band The Platters, but in this case, I was more leaning towards the cover by Freddie Mercury. After writing it into the chapter, I immediately wanted a Tom Ellis version as it's a song I honestly can see Lucifer singing in the show.
> 
> Also....it was as I was writing this chapter that I realised, to my horror, that I was basically writing I really pretentious 'It was all a dream' story. I mean, it's *technically* not, but even I have to admit the similarities. So...yeah, sorry for that. And also sorry for the next chapter.


	9. You’ll Find Your Way

Chloe stared down at her hands, still wrapped around Lucifer. Experimentally, she bent her fingers, watching the skin tighten over her bones as she did. The fabric under her skin was soft, pleasantly so. She breathed against Lucifer’s neck, and felt the heat billow back towards her. She tightened her grip on Lucifer, and he reacted to the touch by pressing himself deeper into her body.  
  
There was nothing fantastical about their embrace. Nothing that would point to it being the stuff of dreams. It was all so normal. So solid. If not for the bloodied blade, she could almost believe it was true.  
  
“I’m not real,” she whispered. “I’m...”  
  
A lie. A travesty. A patchwork of memories. A ghost who thinks it’s alive.  
  
Chloe sighed. “I’m going to need a drink.”  
  
Lucifer didn’t seem to hear her, or if he did, his only reaction was to hold her all the tighter, clinging to her like a child who didn’t want their parents to take away their favourite toy. She nudged Lucifer to let go, and it took several attempts before he acquiesced. He watched her get to her feet with wide eyes.  
  
“Detective?” he said.  
  
Chloe stepped past the blood puddle that marked the place where she’d been stabbed, and carefully perused the shelves of bottles, searching for the best whiskey. In honesty, they all looked the same to her, but right now, she needed whatever was strongest. Anything that stung on the way down her throat.  
  
“Detective?” Lucifer tried again. She heard him sit down on one of the bar stools.  
  
Chloe lifted the fanciest looking bottle off the shelf and plunked it on the glass table. “You want some?” Chloe said, as she grabbed herself a glass.  
  
Lucifer shook his head. “I don’t much like the taste.”  
  
“Right. Tastes like ash. I forgot.”  
  
She gave herself a generous pour and drowned it all down in one gulp. It tasted like any other whiskey she’d ever remembered having.  
  
Not that she’d had any whiskey in her life. Ever. Because this wasn’t real whiskey, and those memories weren’t hers. Weren’t even Chloe Decker’s. How could Lucifer remember how whiskey tasted for Chloe? How could he remember what she thought about it unless she had told him?  
  
The way the whiskey tasted on her tongue, the feeling of it stinging her mouth, those sensations had been grafted onto her, little more than memories put there to substitute the ones he didn’t have.  
  
Chloe swallowed down another shot of whiskey, not even trying to savour the taste. She swallowed another, and wished for it to fog her mind. But she didn’t so much as get a buzz. She wasn’t sure why she expected it. If these were Lucifer’s memories of whiskey, then it was also his memories of its negligible effect on his metabolism. But she continued her fruitless endeavour, pouring shot after shot. She made it as far as pouring the seventh shot when she stopped.  
  
She’d done this before. In her dream. No, it hadn’t been hers, had it. None of them had been hers. They had been _Lucifer’s_ dreams. Of falling. Of leaving yet another imaginary Chloe behind.  
  
Her stomach soured at the thought, and she stared down at the whiskey with a scowl. Even her coping mechanisms weren’t hers.  
  
She held the glass to her face, and scrutinised her reflection, watched how the blue of her eyes and the blonde streaks of her hair distorted in the brown of the liquid. With nothing but her reflection to occupy her, her thoughts wandered down dark and dangerous paths.  
  
All which led straight back to Lucifer. The man who had literally thought her into existence, to act as a replacement. That was the only reason she was here, breathing, thinking. And it wasn’t just her. Trixie, Ella, Dan, everyone was just characters Lucifer had made for his story. And they were all gone now. She was the only one left.  
  
His greatest regret.  
  
...Screw it. Her coping mechanism or not, she needed the drink. She knocked the shot back.  
  
“Are you...okay?” Lucifer asked, hesitantly. 

Chloe chuckled, not caring how manic it sounded. “Why are you even asking that?” she said. “Shouldn’t you already know? After all, I’m just a figment of your imagination. You should know what’s going on in my head.”  
  
Her words made Lucifer grimace. As if the reminder of what she was enough to hurt him physically. “I don’t have any power over what you’re thinking or feeling,” Lucifer said. “Your mind is yours and yours alone.”

“Right,” Chloe scoffed. “Well forgive me if I don’t believe you. I’ve felt your emotions, felt you project them onto me, just like you did the others.”  
  
“That was...an accident.”  
  
“Just like destroying this world was an accident? Destroying everyone I care about?” Chloe bristled, the pain still fresh, even though she knew it now was misplaced. “I can’t believe you let me believe I’d lost everyone. You knew what was happening, and you didn’t say a word. How could you do that to me?” 

Lucifer shrunk into himself, wrapping his hand up to grip his forearms. “I'm sorry,” he murmured. “I...I didn't mean for any of this. It was supposed to be...”

“Perfect,” Chloe finished, remembering the conversation they’d shared. She could hardly grasp the fact that it had been only yesterday when he’d told her that, back when she still believed in the lie. “You wanted all of us to be perfect. So you made yourself your very own Eden,” Chloe said. She shook her head. “But life can’t be perfect, Lucifer. _People_ can’t be perfect.”  
  
“I just wanted you all to be happy,” Lucifer argued weakly.  
  
“No, don’t make this about us, Lucifer,” Chloe snapped. “This—all of this—was for you. _You_ wanted to be happy. We’re only here to fulfil that purpose.” Her anger dimmed at the words, and she shuddered. “... _I’m_ only here to fulfil that purpose.”  
  
Her eyes burned with tears, but she rubbed them away before they could fall. No matter how much she wanted to, she would not let herself break down crying. Not that this didn’t deserve that kind of reaction. Thinking the world was ending had already been too much for her to deal with. Thinking she’d lost Trixie had managed to top even that. But this...this was so much worse.  
  
“I’m not even a person,” she whispered. “I’m a shadow. A substitute.”  
  
“You’re more than that.” Lucifer reached over to hold her hand.  
  
“No, no, stop,” Chloe said, stepping away. “Stop pretending you care about me.“  
  
“I do care about you, Detective,” Lucifer avowed. He smiled sadly. “ _Chloe._ ”  
  
“I’m not her!” she cried, slamming her shot glass down on the table. She did it with far more force than she intended, and it broke under her fingers, shards scattering across the table. Lucifer flinched back. “You were always going on about our love being real, about it being _my_ choice, that you left me when you thought it wasn’t! Now look at you. You’ve gone back on everything you believe in.”  
  
Lucifer shook his head frantically. “I didn’t—”  
  
“Well, you want to know what I think? What I choose? I want you to stop playing this charade, to stop using me to satisfy some fantasy. You have to stop denying the truth, Lucifer. She’s gone. No amount of delusions will change that. You must know that, right?”  
  
Lucifer stared at her with flat and spiritless eyes, and he dug his thumb into his wrist.  
  
“I do,” he mumbled. “I know I can’t change the past.”  
  
“Then why are you still here?” Chloe fumed. “Why are you still trying to pretend?”  
  
“Because it’s better than being alone!”  
  
Chloe blinked, falling back a step, having not expected his outburst. Lucifer’s anger was fleeting, gone the moment he'd finished speaking. He sagged against the bar, hiding his eyes behind his hand. He drew in a shuddering breath.  
  
“Ever since I left you,” he said, “I’ve imagined seeing you again. Imagined what you'd say, how it would feel to have you by my side again. It was what helped me survive all these hundreds of years in Hell. Eventually, however, it turned into a torment. The desire that was and would always be out of my reach. I came this close to drowning away my memories of you with the waters of the River Lethe, if only to make the rest of eternity I will spend away from you more bearable.  
  
“But then,” he went on, his eyes meeting hers, “I stumbled upon the door to my old Hell loop...and I suppose I was desperate for some reprieve. Some semblance of the life I left behind. And when I went inside, there it was. Los Angeles. My friend, my...family. And you. My Chloe. You were just how I remembered you. So full of life. And you held me, spoke to me, like no one had in so long. And I was so weak and so selfish. I knew I should have left before it all went wrong as I knew it inevitably would, that I shouldn’t have pulled you along, but after so many years without you, I couldn’t. I couldn’t leave you again. I...couldn’t say goodbye.”  
  
Chloe bowed her head. The way he spoke of her as if she was truly the same person he’d left behind, made her realise he didn’t see her as a replacement or a shadow. He only saw Chloe when he looked at her. Even now, with the false reality unravelling, he still wanted to believe so badly that she was Chloe, to the point that he couldn’t stand the thought of leaving her.  
  
He’d lost himself in the very dream he’d created. And Chloe, for all the thoughts that threatened to see her into a spiral, still found room to pity him.  
  
How lonely must he be to cherish the company of a lie.

She sighed, and pushed the whiskey bottle aside. She wouldn’t need any more of it, for what little good it did anyway. Of course, she’d give anything to just drift away from all of this and just forget about what she was for a while. But if she did that, she’d be leaving Lucifer to his own misery. And she had told him time and time again that she was here, that she would listen to him.  
  
Now was not the time to break that promise.  
  
“Has being here helped you at all?” she asked. “Have I helped?”  
  
Lucifer nodded. “More than you can ever know.”  
  
“That’s good. I’m glad.” 

Lucifer frowned at her. “So...you’re not angry at me?”

Chloe propped her arms onto the bar and wiped a hand down her face. “I'm really not sure what I'm feeling right now. I mean, yes, of course I'm angry, but I don't think I'm only angry at you. I'm more angry at our situation, I guess. Upset about why I'm here to begin with. Concerned about you.”

“You are?” Lucifer said.

“You literally made yourself an imaginary world to pretend you were still on Earth with me. How could I _not_ be concerned?”  
  
Lucifer’s shock did not waver. “You don’t...hate me?”  
  
“What?” Chloe said, flabbergasted. “No, of course not. I’m really pissed off about what you did, but no, I don’t hate you.”  
  
“Even though I...” He didn’t seem able to say it, but he didn’t have to.  
  
“I have autonomy, Lucifer. I can make my own choices, and I choose not to hate you.”  
  
Lucifer stared at her with awe.  
  
“But I am pretty bitter you didn’t give me any superpowers,” Chloe went on playfully, hoping to lighten the mood even for a brief moment. “Something like, I don’t know, telekinesis or laser eyes. I would obviously have clued on that something wasn’t quite right a bit sooner but I mean...superpowers,” she said with a shrug. “Definitely an acceptable thing for you to change.”  
  
That was enough to stir a weak laugh out of Lucifer. “As if I’d change anything about you, Detective.”  
  
“I thought you wanted everything to be perfect?”  
  
“Yes. That I did,” Lucifer said with a loving smile. He didn’t say more than that, but she knew what he was implying.  
  
Chloe shifted in embarrassment, and looked down at the table, unable to meet his eye. The shards from the glass she’d broken still littered it. “I should clean this up,” she said, moving to pick up a few pieces.  
  
Lucifer shooed her hand away. “I’ve got it, Detective,” he said.  
  
He brushed the pieces into his hand, no even trying to be careful as he did, and then discarded them into the nearby bin. 

“I’m going to run out of glasses if you keep breaking them, darling,” he commented with a chuckle. When he returned to her side, his eyes were soft as he gazed at her. “Not that I mind. I’d rather a thousand broken glasses over a thousand years without you.”

Chloe felt fondness bloom in her chest, and for a moment, she almost believed it to be her own feeling. Could almost believe that this was the beginning of a life together. She could continue to play along with the story and just pretend this had never happened. It’d be so simple. They could be together. They could be real.  
  
But it wasn’t, and it never would be.  
  
Because Lucifer’s hands weren’t bleeding. The glass hadn’t so much as left a scratch.

 _I’m only vulnerable when I’m close to you,_ he told Chloe so many months ago.  
  
And even though she stood in reach, he wasn’t close to Chloe at all. She was in a whole different plane of existence. Living her own life, with her own thoughts and feelings. Her own person.  
  
No matter what he told her, no matter how much he saw her as Chloe, it was clear he knew, even on a subconscious level, that she wasn’t.  
  
She would always be a consolation prize. Always be what he needed, and not what he wanted.  
  
“Lucifer,” she started, but she never made it past his name.  
  
Lucifer stumbled into the bar, and the bottles rattled at the impact. Even after Lucifer pushed himself away, the bottles continued to shake beyond what was normal. Lucifer moaned, and rubbed his forehead.  
  
“Are you okay?” Chloe said.  
  
Lucifer straightened too quickly for it to pass off as natural. “I’ll be fine,” he assured, waving her off. “A bit dizzy, is all.”

“Lucifer,” Chloe said sternly, “you don’t get dizzy. No more half-truths. Tell me what’s happening.”

Lucifer grimaced, and rubbed the fabric of his sleeves fretfully. “You won’t like it,” he told her.  
  
“I’ve had a long day. At this point, I don’t think anything can surprise me.”  
  
Lucifer’s throat bobbed as he shifted nervously. “It’s Hell. It’s...taking control. I won’t be able to hold it back much longer. I may be it’s King, but even I cannot best it when it strikes. It’ll win, sooner or later.”  
  
“And what happens when it wins?”  
  
Lucifer’s eyes trailed down to the blade. He made an aborted movement towards it, only to sway in the opposite direction.

“It wants me to use it,” he whispered. “To...hurt you.”  
  
“Oh,” Chloe said.  
  
Lucifer swallowed, and his whole body shuddered as he dragged his eyes away from the blade. “I don’t want to, believe me, Detective. I’d give anything not to do that to you again. But torment was always the intentions of the Loops, and Hell will no longer permit me to misuse it for my own pleasure. Soon, I’ll be just like all the other tormented souls here, stuck in my own prison of guilt.”  
  
Chloe leaned back against the shelves, hoping it would keep her balanced. Today was really just one shellshock after the other. She was almost becoming numb to it all. Almost.  
  
“So, if you don’t leave...”  
  
“I’ll spend the rest of eternity here,” Lucifer said, “hurting you over and over again, until I eventually forget what is and isn’t real.”  
  
Chloe’s stomach dropped. “Lucifer, that’s awful.”  
  
“I’m aware.”  
  
“And what would happen to me? Would I forget as well?”  
  
“I’m...not sure,” Lucifer admitted. “Tulpas are usually dealt with long before they can interfere too much with a Loop.”  
  
Perhaps it was because she was one herself, but Chloe found herself strangely curious about what tulpas did in Hell. “Interfere how?”  
  
“Well, demons have told me that while some tulpas manifest to enforce a soul’s guilt, many have a tendency to...comfort the one who conjured them. And it’s not exactly easy for my demons to torture someone with their guilt when that someone has a friendly voice assuring them it wasn’t their fault.”  
  
“Isn’t that a good thing?”  
  
Lucifer quirked his head. “In what way?”  
  
“You said to me there were thousands of innocent people who are only Hell because they think they deserve it. What if the tulpas are just the intervention they need to help them work towards forgiving themselves? To give themselves the second chance they need.”  
  
"That..." Lucifer blinked, and his eyes darted to and fro with thought. “You might actually be onto something there, Detective. Help them by letting them help themselves. That’s actually quite ingenious.” For a brief moment, he seemed almost elated at the idea, as if it was the news he’d spent years waiting to hear. But his joy quickly soured, and his brows drew together. “But that would mean...all these years of hoping they would find their way to Heaven, and I’ve been responsible for destroying the one thing that could have allowed them that opportunity.”  
  
“Lucifer, you didn’t know,” Chloe soothed.  
  
He shook his head. “Ignorance doesn’t make what I did any better. I could’ve looked into it more, cared about it more, but I didn’t do anything. I just left them to rot, to be tortured for all eternity,” Lucifer growled. “If anyone deserves to spend the rest of their existence being tormented, it’s me.”  
  
Chloe knew without trying that no amount of assurances would make him believe that he didn’t belong in a Hell Loop. So she tried a different tactic. “Well, it’s not just you who would have to spend the rest of existence here. Your torment involves stabbing me. Again and again and again. Do you think I deserve that?”  
  
Before she’d even finished speaking, Lucifer was already fumbling other himself to protest. “No, of course not! You don’t deserve anything like that! How could you think that? You are everything I’m not. You’re brave, and smart, and kind, and wonderful. Heaven would surely weep if you did not grace its gates.”  
  
“Even though I tried to send you to Hell? Lied to you more than once? Spent years belittling you for thinking you were the Devil?”  
  
Lucifer quailed. “That...I...” He couldn’t seem to find any words.  
  
“Everyone’s got a laundry list of stuff they did wrong, Lucifer, even me,” Chloe said, placing her hands on his shoulders. “Trixie, Dan, Ella, Linda, your brother. We’ve all done stuff we regret. You’ve lived a long life, and spent most of that time in Hell surrounded by some of the very worst of humanity, so of course your amount of mistakes might be a bit more than others. But you’re not the hopeless cause you think you are, Lucifer. You want to be good? You want to redeem yourself? Then go do that. Don’t let your past hold you back from moving forward.”  
  
She wrapped him into a hug, and in a quieter voice, she added, “Don’t let me hold you back from moving forward. I meant what I said before. I want you to stop this charade. For your sake and mine. I know you don’t want to say goodbye again, but Lucifer, there’s no future for you here. You have to go.”  
  
“But if I leave, you’ll...” He trailed off, clearly unwilling to divulge the information to her, and any other situation, Chloe might have left it alone. But the unease in his voice was enough to tell her that whatever it was, no matter how terrible it was, was something she needed to know.  
  
Chloe withdrew from the hug to look him in the eye. “Lucifer, what is it? Tell me.”  
  
He swallowed, and took him several twists of his cufflinks to work up the courage to speak. “Without me here to maintain the illusion,” Lucifer said, his voice thick, “this world won’t be able to stay together. It’ll collapse back to nothing, taking everything and...everyone with it.”  
  
Chloe sighed. She couldn’t even say she was surprised at the news, and she only felt the briefest of fear pass through her before she settled into resignation. Somewhere deep inside of her, she had expected this. Had known what was to come. And, to her surprise, it didn’t scare her as much as it should.  
  
“Well, if I’m being honest, between spending the rest of existence being your torture device, and basically dying, neither sound all too great. Can I maybe pick something else?” she said wryly.  
  
Lucifer went to speak, but he paused abruptly, frowning. His eyes drifted to the elevator. “...There’s always another way out,” he murmured.  
  
A spark of thought glimmered in his eyes, and as he stared at the elevator doors, it soon brightened to a flame.

Lucifer turned back to her, a smile widening across his face. He clapped his hands together and giggled with glee. “That’s it!”  
  
“What is?”  
  
“You can come with me!”  
  
Chloe should have been thrilled by the idea, but she felt nothing other than sadness. He really couldn’t let her go, could he. Not even when he should. Before Chloe could so much as speak her thoughts, he had wrapped his hand.  
  
“No one has to die, and I don’t have to leave you. It’s the perfect solution,” he said as he dragged her over to the elevator. He slid his palm through the air in what looked like a very stilted wave, and the doors opened with a groan.  
  
It wasn’t the interior of the elevator that was on the other side.  
  
A gust of smoke-scented wind blew across Chloe’s face, flinging ash particles at her as it did, but she didn’t close her eyes, unbothered by the disturbance. She peered out of the Hell Loop, and took in the world that had kept Lucifer’s dream inside it like a pearl in a clam.  
  
The first thought that registered in her head was that it wasn’t what she expected. She had imagined black skies over a red, barren landscape, with sulfur and lava everywhere you went.  
  
But the Hell she saw before her, other than the heat and ash, was nothing of the sort. Gone was the cliché fire pits and masses of torture souls roaming wildly. Instead, she saw a world that was as gloomy as it was eerie. Storm clouds covered the skies from east to west, and cast a great shadow over the landscape. Columns of hexagonal stones rose up before her, and bordered what one could almost call a hallway, a title made all the more fitting by the eclectic collection of doors that were embedded in the stone, some not even on ground level. In a way, it reminded Chloe of a hotel.  
  
Not a very nice one, though, and certainly not one she would visit on her own violation. While it was perhaps better than she expected, it was hardly a vacation spot.  
  
“I can see why you wanted to get away,” Chloe said.  
  
“Yes, dreadful, isn’t it. Dad certainly was having an off day when he designed this place.” Lucifer smiled, and squeezed her hand. “But with you here, it may very well earn the description of ‘decent’.”  
  
“Lucifer,” she said, but couldn’t find the strength to say the words she wanted to say. He looked so happy, happier than he’d been in days. She didn’t want to ruin that, not yet. Instead, she said, “I don’t think you will be stuck here forever. I believe you’ll find your way back to Earth someday.”  
  
Her words didn’t seem to dim his excitement in the slightest. “I left behind some optimistic thoughts a long time ago, Detective,” Lucifer said dismissively. “This is my place now. This is where I belong.”  
  
“But if you could, would you leave it?”  
  
“To visit Earth? I don’t think so, no. It’d hurt far too much.”  
  
“How about to stay?”  
  
Lucifer paused, his mood shifting into something far more sombre. He glanced up at the sky. “If I could...yes. I would.” Then he shook his head. “But that will never happen, and I’ve grown sick of taunting myself with the hope that I could. So, if you’re asking out of fear that I’ll leave you, then you need not worry. I will always be here by your side, until the end.”  
  
That was what she was worried about.  
  
“Come along, Detective,” Lucifer said. “To new beginnings.”  
  
He led her out into Hell.  
  
Chloe made it as far as the door.  
  
Somehow, she had known it would happen. She was an imaginary thing in an imaginary world. She had no place in reality, and reality made that stance very clear. It didn’t even give her the chance to feel the world outside the door, its judgement quick and precise. As soon as her hand passed through the barrier, it disappeared.  
  
It wasn’t painful, and if she hadn’t been paying attention, she wouldn't have even noticed. One moment her hand was there, and the next it was gone.  
  
Non-existent.  
  
It told her everything she needed to know. Lucifer could go on, but she could go no further.  
  
Lucifer’s fingers enclosed around the nothingness that had replaced her hand, and he barely made another step before he whirled around to face her.  
  
The excitement that had kept Lucifer buoyant drained out of him in a rush. He stared at her severed limb, the realisation of what it meant tightening his features with horror.  
  
“No,” he whispered. He shook his head. “No.”  
  
Chloe withdrew her hand, and it quickly reformed as it passed back into the Loop. “Lucifer, it’s okay.”  
  
“No, it’s not! There has to be another way. There has to. I can’t lose you.” 

“I know. But I think you might have to. I can’t go with you. I have no place out there.”  
  
“Then I’ll stay with you,” he said, stepping towards her, but as soon as he crossed through the door, Chloe pressed her hand against his chest, halting him.  
  
“No. You have to go, Lucifer. You can’t destroy everything you’ve worked for just to torture yourself over your memories. I’m sorry, I really am, but you have to let me go. You can't live in a dream for the rest of your life.”  
  
“But you’ll fade away. You’ll _die._ ”  
  
“I don’t want to die,” Chloe admitted, “but...I don’t want to be the reason you lose your chance at a future. Your chance to see the people you love again.”  
  
“But I won’t ever see them again. I lost all of them. I can’t lose you as well.”  
  
“You were always going to lose me. You said it yourself. Once the absence is filled, we fade away. I was always meant to be temporary. At least let me end it on my terms. I deserve that much.” 

Lucifer trembled, and as a tear fell down his cheek, Chloe reached up to brush it away. He pressed his hand onto hers, and as it drifted down between them, he kept his hold. But she could see it in his eyes, the slight shiver of his hand as he held her, that he had chosen what path to take.  
  
The path he would have to go down on his own.  
  
“You don’t deserve this,” Lucifer said.  
  
“Neither do you.”  
  
Lucifer stared at her, his mouth opening and closing wordlessly. She could see the edges of the word he was trying to form, and he’d just managed to muster the first sound when Chloe pressed her finger to his lips.  
  
“Don’t say it, please. Give us a different ending to our story. Something to remember me by.” 

When he found the words to speak, they weren’t those of farewell or love. Those belonged to the Chloe he’d left behind. These words were just for her, and her alone.  
  
“I’ll be brave, just for you, I promise,” he said, and that was all she needed to hear.  
  
His hand drifted away from hers, his fingertips lingering on the edges of hers. Chloe waited, knowing she could not make the decision for him. He had to be the one to do it.  
  
And then, with a shaky breath, he did. He finally let go.  
  
Chloe stepped away, and watched as the doors between them rattled to a close. Just before they did, she smiled.  
  
“Next time you see Chloe,” she said, “tell her you love her, okay? For me.”

She never had the chance to hear Lucifer’s response. The doors closed with a click.  
  
The white noise of the room was the first thing to vanish. The books followed, their titles vanishing and the colours seeping out until each was the same blank white as the next. Next went the lights. Then the details in the fabric, the walls, the floor. One by one, the room was stripped of its character, leaving nothing but a nebulous, pale shape in its place. Even that was quick to vanish, sinking into the fog that was crawling ever closer.  
  
Chloe strode through the space, her attention solely on the balcony. She rested her arms on the degrading railing, and turned her gaze to the sky. There were no stars nor any clouds to look out, the fog having stolen that all away a long time ago. But she could imagine.  
  
She could imagine all the good that Lucifer would end up doing, all the people he would save. She could imagine Lucifer finding the sense of worthiness he was so desperate for. She could imagine the day he and Chloe reunited, and loved each other with all their hearts.   
  
As the world ended, Chloe dreamt of all the memories to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, writing this: "Does this count as Major Character death?...This feels kind of like Major Character death." 
> 
> Season 5 Chloe: *has identity crisis about not being a real person*  
> Tulpa!Chloe: "Trust me, it could be worse."
> 
> I'm sorry about this chapter, really. I truly wish it could have ended a bit happier. But hey, *nervous laughter as I do jazz hands* there's still one more chapter to go.


	10. Salvation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are, folks, on the epilogue. I'm glad you stuck around this long.

Lucifer wasn’t sure how long he spent outside the door. Perhaps it was only seconds, or maybe it was another few hundred years, but however long it was, he knew for certain he hated every blasted moment.  
  
Because even though he could not see it happening, he knew what had transpired on the other side of that door.  
  
She was gone. He had lost her. Again.   
  
It was a good thing indeed that demons rarely wandered around the hallways of Hell, for if they did, they would have stumbled upon him, sat upon the stone trembling, and seen just how pathetic he was. Hardly a way to impress upon them his authority. They barely respected him as is nowadays, always going on how 'soft' he’d become. He’d hate to prove them right. So Lucifer wrapped his wings around himself and tucked his head between his knees and hoped it would give him some semblance of privacy.  
  
He’d never given himself time to truly mourn the loss of Chloe. Of course, he’d thought of her far too much, and he had spent so many years missing her, but he’d never really spent any time to really indulge in anything beyond that. He’d not cried over her once in all the years he’d been gone. There was always something to distract him, some new soul to torment or old friends to visit. Or dreams to lose oneself in.  
  
But there were no distractions now, and the wound that had never healed had been cut anew.  
  
He’d thought going through all of this once would be enough to prepare him for a second rerun, but that certainly wasn’t the case. Every goodbye hurt, and each time it got all the harder to deal with.  
  
He couldn’t even hold onto the dream of her. All he had left was harsh reality. All he had left was himself.  
  
So he mourned.  
  
It was as terrible as he expected it would be, but it’d been a long time coming and really, he was glad to finally just let it happen. Of course, he hated how he couldn’t stop shaking and how his tears were ruining the fabric of his suit and just about every single bloody thing that had led him, but he didn’t hate the small modicum of relief that it brought.  
  
And it felt...kind, in a way. To cry over not just Chloe back on Earth, but the Chloe he’d just lost. She didn’t deserve to be shoved under piles over denial, not after what she’d done for him. She’d given him a chance to be better, to move forward. He wouldn’t let that go to waste.  
  
He’d almost spent all his tears when the sound of wings sounded down the hall, followed by the soft approach of someone walking down the hall. Lucifer softened. He would know those dainty footsteps anywhere. He rubbed his face, but did not yet lower his wings, knowing he was nowhere near presentable.  
  
“I thought you said you weren't coming back,” he said.  
  
He heard Azrael sit down beside him. “Well, I lied. You're my brother, Lu. I would never just let you go and do something so stupid as willingly letting yourself get trapped in a Loop. I would’ve dragged you out of there before it came to that if I had to.”  
  
“Well, lucky you, you didn't have to afterall,” Lucifer muttered. “I’m here, so you can stop worrying about me. Go back to your job. I won’t bother you any further with my trivial issues, nor do you have to give me any more updates, just as you desired.”  
  
Azrael brushed her hand across the back of his wing. “The only reason I ever said that was because I always felt like I was rubbing salt into the wound, telling you they were okay when you clearly weren’t. I thought if I stopped, it’d help you. But I see now I didn’t go about asking that the right way. I’m sorry.”  
  
Lucifer peeled back his wing, and looked her in the eye, trying to find any trace of a lie. But there wasn’t one. She really meant it. He settled his wings behind him, and shifted just a tad bit closer to her.  
  
“I’m sorry about what I said too,” he said. “About not forgiving you. I shouldn’t have lashed out at you like that. I was...stressed.”  
  
“It’s fine. I get where you were coming from. I should have visited more after you were thrown out.”  
  
“‘More’?” Lucifer echoed with a raised eyebrow.  
  
“Alright, yeah, that was a poor choice of words,” Azrael said. “I should’ve visited, period. Being alone...it’s the worst.”  
  
Lucifer sunk back into the wall behind him, and hugged his arms to his chest. “That it is.”  
  
Azrael shuffled closer to him, and placed her hand on his knee. “Are you...okay?”  
  
“Not particularly,” he admitted.  
  
“Is there anything I can do?”  
  
“Beyond bringing a dream back from the dead and playing a celestial game of Chinese whispers so I can speak to Chloe again, no, I don’t think so.”  
  
Azrael hummed thoughtfully. “I could perhaps look after Hell for a bit so you could go see her. Not for too long—lots of people die, unfortunately, and Dad probably wouldn’t be happy with me if souls started lingering around on Earth— but long enough for you to have at least a day on Earth. We could make it work. So what do you think? Yay or nay?”  
  
Lucifer was already shaking his head. “Saying goodbye twice was already painful enough for me. I don’t think I could do it a third time. And I know if I ever returned to Earth, I’d never find the strength to leave. But...thank you for offering.”  
  
“Okay,” Azrael said. After a moment, she asked, “Was it worth it? Even with how it ended?”  
  
Lucifer didn’t have to ask what ‘it’ was. He trailed a finger across his palm. He could still feel the lingering traces of Chloe's warmth. “Yes,” he whispered. “Every day was worth it.”  
  
“You want to talk about it?”  
  
He could’ve told her about the mornings with Chloe and Trixie, the kind he always wished to be a part of. He could’ve told her about how Ella had spent hours talking to him with the optimism he always hoped he could have and that he wished she hadn’t lost after Charlotte’s death. He could’ve told her how happy Maze had been with Eve by her side, the way she had so clearly yearned for in those last few days he’d seen her, and how happy Eve had been in return for finally having someone treat her the way she so rightly deserved. He could’ve told her about Daniel no longer hating him for Charlotte’s death, and how they’d been on good terms with one another again. He could’ve told her about how he’d been assured, more than once, that his mistakes didn’t define him.  
  
He could've told her about being reunited with Chloe, and the beginnings of the future they had together before it all fell apart.  
  
But Azrael didn’t need to know the things he fantasised about. And so he shook his head, and kept the memories to himself.  
  
“Okay,” Azrael with a kind smile. “Just...just promise me you won’t do it again, ‘kay. I’d be super wrecked if I couldn't see your stupid face again.”  
  
“Is that your way of telling me you’d miss me if I was gone?” Lucifer said wryly.  
  
“Of course I’d miss you, you dumb-dumb. You’re the coolest person I know, and I know a tonne of people. Most of them are dead, but you get the point. Losing you would be the worst thing ever.”  
  
Lucifer’s heart warmed at her admission. “I won’t manifest anymore fantasies, you have my word.”  
  
Azrael held out her pinkie finger. “Promise me, properly.”  
  
“You can’t be serious.”  
  
Azrael gave him a defiant look, and waggled her pinkie, beckoning him to take it. Lucifer rolled his eyes, but he obliged her, looping his finger around hers. “I promise I won’t do it again. Happy?”  
  
“Yep.” Then, without so much as a warning, she threw her hands around him and squeezed him tight.  
  
Lucifer made his token protests, and shifted uncomfortably in her hold, but it didn’t take him long to give up the act, too desperate for the warmth of another to pretend he didn’t want it. Nowadays, he’d give up all his riches gladly in exchange for a hug. He softened in Azrael’s arms, and breathed out a sigh of contentment.  
  
Once again, Lucifer was thankful demons rarely prowled the halls. Seeing him sobbing himself stupid was one thing, but seeing him hugging his sister was another thing altogether.  
  
He was the King of Hell, for crying out loud. He had a reputation to uphold.  
  
Right now, though, all he wanted was to be held.  
  
“Thank you,” he said. “For coming back. I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t been here.”  
  
“I’m glad you came back too,” Azrael said.  
  
“Yes, well, you can thank Chloe for that. She...helped me make my way back here. I don’t think I could’ve done that without her.”  
  
“Maybe. But you’re stronger than you think, Lu.”  
  
Lucifer scoffed disbelievingly.  
  
“No, you are,” Azrael insisted. “I mean, you spent centuries in Hell alone, with no one there to comfort you after the fall. And then you had to spend eons torturing people, and just had an all-round crap time of it all for way too long. And yet you still managed to grow past all that and become the super duper awesome person you are today. I think that’s amazing.”  
  
Lucifer couldn’t speak past the lump in his throat, and he was all the more glad for the hug. Like Hell would he let her see the stray tears her words brought forth from his eyes.

They stayed in the embrace for some time, neither willing to end it. Eventually, however, time had to impose. Azrael drew back from the hug, and it took all of Lucifer’s willpower not to make a noise of protest.  
  
“I gotta go soon,” Azrael admitted sadly. “Job and all that.”  
  
Lucifer sighed. “Yes, right, of course. Go on then. I’ll be here, as always.”  
  
Azrael unfurled her wings. “I’ll visit whenever I can, alright,” she assured. “And I’ll try to give you better updates. I might even get Ella to write you some stuff.”  
  
Just before she could fly off, Lucifer grabbed her sleeve, halting her.   
  
“Before you go, can I ask you to do me a favour?”  
  
“Depends. What is it?”  
  
“Could you procure me another phone? My current one is nearing the end of its life, and I’d rather not lose access to all the photos I have on there.”  
  
“‘End of its life’?” Azrael echoed with a scoff. “I’m pretty sure it’d be a zombie phone at this point. It’s like 600-and-something years old, isn’t it? How did you even manage to keep it intact for so long?”  
  
“With great difficulty, let me assure you.”  
  
Azrael shrugged. “Yeah, sure I can get you a new one.”  
  
“Thank you,” Lucifer said. “Oh, and there’s one other thing I’d like to ask of you, if you’ll allow me. Less of a favour and more of a proposition.”  
  
Azrael prompted for him to go ahead.  
  
“I have a idea, but for it to work, I’ll need your help. Without you, it all falls apart.” At Azrael’s unsure expression, he added, “Don’t worry, it won’t be too hard. In fact, it’ll involve your usual psychopomp activities, so you’ll still be doing your job.”  
  
“What exactly is the idea?”  
  
“Oh, you’ll love it, Rae Rae. It’s brilliant. Nay, glorious, in fact. And I hardly have to do a thing. I just have to sit back and let the magic work. It’s ingenious. And a great up yours at our father to boot.”  
  
“Stop bragging and just tell me, you goof,” she said, punching him lightly in the shoulder. “What’s the idea?”  
  
Lucifer grinned. “Salvation for the innocents of Hell.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ta-da. That's it, folks.
> 
> Now we're at the end. I can tell you the movie that inspired the initial idea for this that I left unnamed in the first chapter. It was Charlie Kaufman's film 'I'm Thinking of Ending Things'! A really weird movie that I honestly didn't enjoy that much, but after I read an article clarifying the story for me, I was for some reason inspired and I can say with certainty that if I hadn't watched that movie, I probably would never have got this idea. So I have to give credit where credit is due. 
> 
> Another film I took inspiration from (funnily enough, it's also a movie from Charlie Kaufman) is 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind', a movie that I absolutely love and stole a few ideas from (namely, the everything going blank as the memories fall apart). In fact, the poem that I got the title from is also the poem from which the movie's name is sourced.
> 
> Alright, that's all. With that, I bid you adieu. :)


End file.
